A New Model for Book Publishing That’s Really Quite Old—and Which Just Might Work.
A few weeks back, I made the digital acquaintance of a would-be thriller writer, who had a heartbreaking story about the book publishing business: |
| “Le Philosophe” (2007) by André Martins de Barros |
That made me perk up—Simonoff had blown me off, when I approached him about representing me and my monster, The Green of the Republic. And here was John, this obscure gaspipe engineer, who’d landed Simonoff as his agent.
Color me impressed—and jealous, too: Simonoff has the reputation for making seven-figure sales of first-time novelists. He’s money. He also handles something like half of the writers on The New Yorkers’ most recent “20 Under 40” list. He’s money and prestige.
So Simonoff took on John’s first novel, Live Through This. Not only that, Simonoff got his agency behind the book, and then sent it out to about a dozen publishers, plus a half dozen movie studios.
WME2 is forever slugging it out with CAA for agency dominance—they’re big. That Simonoff and his agency were fully committed to John’s book says a lot—says volumes. John should’ve been busy figuring out where he was gonna put that mountain of money he would soon be coming into.
But then, here comes the sad part: The book went out to a dozen publishers—but not one of them made an offer on the book. None of the film studios made any offers either. The book went out there into the NYC publishing scene, with the full commitment of the hottest agency on both coasts—
—and landed with a great big thud.
Cole picked himself up, dusted himself off, and then went and wrote another book—just as good as the first. But unsurprisingly—and rather shamefully—Simonoff and WME2 dropped John as a client. When he went looking for a new agent with this second novel under his arm, he was blown off, or given the run-around.
In a real sense, his career as a novelist had been burned to a crisp—immolated and ruined before it properly got underway.
Now, I’ve read John’s first book, Live Through This: It’s pretty damned good. People with literary aspirations often ask me to read their manuscripts: Most of them suck donkey turds—you can tell right on the first page. Reading a whole chapter of these abortions is sheer torture.
But after the first paragraph of John’s book, I was hooked—the guy knows how to write. Not only that, but you can understand why Simonoff and WME2 got behind Live Through This: The book’s a winner. It’s fun, dynamic, surprising—it does everything a good thriller should, and more. Even its title screams “winner”.
In other words, Live Through This should have found a publisher, and then a nice comfy spot on the New York Times best-sellers list. It probably should have found a movie deal, too.
But it didn’t. Instead, it got a big fat nothing.
The reason it failed to find a publisher is because publishing as a business is going down the tubes.
 |
| “The Librarian” (1566) by Giuseppe Arcimboldo |
This is an advance on royalties. The publisher agrees that, for every hardcover sold, the writer will get 15% of the list price, and for every paperback sold, he will get 10 to 12% of the sales price.
If and when the book “sells-through”—that is, sells enough for the publisher to recoup the advance he shelled out—the writer will begin earning even more money.
If the book does not sell-through, then the publisher eats the loss.
Right off the bat, you can see the risks inherent in the model. In trader-speak, the publisher is writing a covered call on a commodity which is innately bearish—after all, a new novel by a new writer is more likely to fail than to succeed. So odds are pretty good that the publisher will take a bath, while the writer walks away a winner.
From the publisher’s perspective, it gets even worse.
From the publisher’s perspective, it gets even worse.
Standard industry practice is, whatever the list price of a hardcover, the publisher gets half of that number; the other half goes to the retailer. So let’s say the book’s list price is $25—the publisher gets $12.50.
Now that means that author royalties—15% of the list price—are actually 30% of the publisher’s revenue: $3.75 per hardcover. Add to that, printing each copy of a hardcover costs about $4.
But that’s just production costs and royalties: Marketing—and the publisher’s overhead—plus that little thing known as “profits”—comes out of the remaining $4.75 per book.
Now that means that author royalties—15% of the list price—are actually 30% of the publisher’s revenue: $3.75 per hardcover. Add to that, printing each copy of a hardcover costs about $4.
But that’s just production costs and royalties: Marketing—and the publisher’s overhead—plus that little thing known as “profits”—comes out of the remaining $4.75 per book.
So a $50,000 author advance means a book has to sell about 15,000 copies to recoup costs—if the book sells less than that, the publisher lost money. Naturally, a publisher will go for a bit extra—say a print run of 20,000. Not an exorbitant number for a first-time author with a decent but not spectacular book.
But 20,000 copies, between royalties and production and marketing costs, means that the publisher has to shell out at least $150,000 before seeing a nickel in sales, let alone returns on the investment. Check the math: $50,000 author advance, plus $80,000 production costs, plus $20,000 in bare-bones marketing: $150,000 for a 20,000 copy first edition.
And this hypothetical novel I’ve been discussing is a small- to medium-sized book—not some big monster, like a book by Danielle Steele or John Grisham. Some of those books have million copy first runs, and massive ad campaigns behind them.
But then again, these are established, name-brand authors. So paradoxically, though the numbers are bigger, the risk is less: Danielle Steele sells, and sells consistently. And if perchance one of her novels mysteriously underperforms? No big deal: The next one will make up for it.
But for first-time authors?
Now, with an agent like Simonoff, a big literary agency like WME2 fully behind him, and a hot new thriller like Live Through This, John Cole should have gotten a $250,000 to $1,500,000 advance on his first novel. The range, I know, seems awfully wide, but the difference between a quarter of a million and $1.5 million (or more) rests on whether there were other interested publishers and an auction situation develops, or whether the agent does his job, etc.—a whole slew of variables that are not relevant to this discussion.
What is relevant is, John Cole should have found a publisher. He’s way talented enough, and he had the goods—like I said, his book is hot.
But he didn’t find a publisher—which actually makes sense (though I doubt John will see it that way): From a publisher’s point of view, acquiring Cole’s first novel did not mean shelling out, say, $500,000 in an advance—it meant shelling out at least $1.5 million. And perhaps closer to $2 million, in order to have a strong marketing push.
$2 million? On a first-time author? In this economy? With the chance that the guy might be a one-hit wonder? Or that the book—even if it’s good—fails to find its audience? And again, $2 million—in this economy?
So that’s what happened: Paradoxically, John’s unquestionably hot new thriller and big-time literary agent priced him out of the market. It was too expensive for publishers to put out his book—and increasingly, it’s too expensive to publish any new author, let alone a clearly commercial piece of fiction like John’s. Even a small book is costing the publisher $100,000 to $250,000 in out-of-pocket costs, costs that won’t be recouped for at least two years, and possibly as long as four.
That’s why the publishing business is dying.
That’s why the publishing business is dying.
What’s happening with publishers is, their business model is forcing them to play it safe: They have to shell out so much money up front for a title, that it becomes financially irresponsible for them to make bad bets—they have to go with the dependable winner, even if that means passing up on potentially hot new winners, like Cole’s book.
As a result, publishers reduce the number of authors they peddle—squeezing out mid-list and new risky novelists—and stick with tried-and-true authors. They try to milk these tired old authors for as much as they can. Tom Clancy is about to come out with a new book—I’m sure he’s a nice guy, but Clancy hasn't written anything decent since his second book, Red Storm Rising, over twenty years ago. Everything else he’s published has been crap—or been ghost-written. But Clancy still grinds them out—because his publisher is sure to make a tidy, sure profit, while a much more deserving author like John Cole gets the shaft.
This is going on at all levels of publishing, and in all genres, including “serious” or “literary” fiction: The same tired old writers are getting published, while fresh and adventurous new authors are getting squeezed out. Don’t believe me? Ask yourself when was the last time a mainstream publisher put out a formally experimental or inconoclastic book like U.S.A. or Pale Fire or V. Serious literature is now as milquetoast safe as Jonathan Franzen’s latest droner, or idiotically pretentious like anything by Denis Johnson.
It’s not the business that killed the art—it’s the lack of business that made art a luxury. Now we get ersatz literature and faux art, as politely tame as a neutered and housebroken pet.
It’s not the business that killed the art—it’s the lack of business that made art a luxury. Now we get ersatz literature and faux art, as politely tame as a neutered and housebroken pet.
In its panic over dwindling income, publishing has become obsessed with e-books—most everyone commenting on the industry says it will save the business. Publishers especially claim that e-books will save them. But it’s a bit like a drowning man, latching on to a floating splinter.
Certainly e-books are profitable in one sense—radically lowered production costs, zero transportation and storage costs (which for phys-books can be considerable). And with the proliferation of e-readers like the Kindle, the iPad, and all the other portable devices, more and more readers will prefer e-books over phys-books—you can carry 100 books in a 2-pound iPad, when you go for a weekend at the beach: Who wouldn’t prefer that convenience?
But e-books won’t save the industry—publishers themselves are taking care of that. Dan Gillmor in a very good recent piece in Salon lays out publisher’s foolish strategy with regards to e-book publishing: Basically, charge as much as possible. In a few cases, publishers are actually charging more than what the hardcover is selling for on Amazon.
This is not a way to develop a profit-center. On the contrary, this is the perfect way to foment e-book piracy, to the detriment of the entire industry, especially authors. Look what happened to music, look what’s happening to film and TV.
Certainly e-books are profitable in one sense—radically lowered production costs, zero transportation and storage costs (which for phys-books can be considerable). And with the proliferation of e-readers like the Kindle, the iPad, and all the other portable devices, more and more readers will prefer e-books over phys-books—you can carry 100 books in a 2-pound iPad, when you go for a weekend at the beach: Who wouldn’t prefer that convenience?
But e-books won’t save the industry—publishers themselves are taking care of that. Dan Gillmor in a very good recent piece in Salon lays out publisher’s foolish strategy with regards to e-book publishing: Basically, charge as much as possible. In a few cases, publishers are actually charging more than what the hardcover is selling for on Amazon.
This is not a way to develop a profit-center. On the contrary, this is the perfect way to foment e-book piracy, to the detriment of the entire industry, especially authors. Look what happened to music, look what’s happening to film and TV.
Publishers are drowning, or else foolishly drilling holes in any life rafts that come to save them, because of the basic flaw in their business’ model: Paying author advances is what’s wrong with the publishing business.
E-books won’t change that basic flaw in the business model. Indeed, e-books are about to make things worse, as now agents are demanding their authors get advances on e-books too: Advances that the publishing industry cannot really afford, but are finding themselves unable to get out of paying. Look how Andrew Wylie finessed Random House into a deal on e-books of his authors. Wylie’s always been the bleeding edge of the business—where The Jackal goes, the other jackals, er, literary agents, will soon follow.
It’s the author advance—that’s what’s killing the biz: If just that one element of the business model—paying author advances against royalties—were scrapped, and instead authors received monies only as their novels actually sold? The publishing business would be 1,000 times healthier—and there’d be a lot more new and interesting books.
E-books won’t change that basic flaw in the business model. Indeed, e-books are about to make things worse, as now agents are demanding their authors get advances on e-books too: Advances that the publishing industry cannot really afford, but are finding themselves unable to get out of paying. Look how Andrew Wylie finessed Random House into a deal on e-books of his authors. Wylie’s always been the bleeding edge of the business—where The Jackal goes, the other jackals, er, literary agents, will soon follow.
It’s the author advance—that’s what’s killing the biz: If just that one element of the business model—paying author advances against royalties—were scrapped, and instead authors received monies only as their novels actually sold? The publishing business would be 1,000 times healthier—and there’d be a lot more new and interesting books.
Similarly, if instead of an advance on royalties, publishers could pay authors a flat fee for the right to publish a book for a set period of time—in essence, a long call option—publishers would be much more aggressive in terms of breaking out a new author: After all, if sales of a book passed the break-even-point, then the book would become all profit for the publisher. Therefore, with this carrot in sight, the publisher would really push to break in a new author, and not be stingy with the marketing—the publisher would have an incentive to try to make a break-out hit.
However, this is not the case. The current system, with the incredibly wide ranges for advances, which I mentioned above, makes publishing effectively a blind gamble—for the publishers. And if-if-if a book is a hit? The publisher won’t see additional profits. The way the current advance-on-royalties system works, it’s all risk for publishers, and precious little profits if a book is a success.
But the advance-on-royalties system is great for literary agents. Wonderful—for them.
However, this is not the case. The current system, with the incredibly wide ranges for advances, which I mentioned above, makes publishing effectively a blind gamble—for the publishers. And if-if-if a book is a hit? The publisher won’t see additional profits. The way the current advance-on-royalties system works, it’s all risk for publishers, and precious little profits if a book is a success.
But the advance-on-royalties system is great for literary agents. Wonderful—for them.
The system might be killing publishers and the business itself, but unfortunately, publishers can’t change their business practices—because if any publisher ever tried to change the advance-on-royalties system, every literary agent would black-ball them and shut them out.
Authors wouldn’t mind if the basic business model were changed in order to save the industry—it’s the agents who would scream bloody murder.
See, years ago, publishers used to deal directly with their authors—literary agents handled only a fraction of all published writers. However, as first mimeograph technology and then photocopying technology spread, the number of manuscripts in circulation skyrocketed.
At the same time, corporate ownership of publishing houses put pressure on costs, making staff cuts inevitable—and inevitably, wiping the place clean of those publishing shock-troops who would slog through the slush pile (the pile of unsolicited manuscripts everyone in publishing has in their office, like miniature Towers of Babble) where the next Great American Novel was hidden.
Starting roughly around 1970, publishers effectively began outsourcing to literary agents the task of wading through and weeding out manuscripts from the slush piles. The corporate squeeze on publishing costs, coupled with photocopying technology that multiplied logarithmically the number of manuscripts in circulation, made this transition happen. As the literary agents took over this task of separating the wheat from the chaff, they—and not the publishers—became the gatekeepers of the talent.
Today, no publisher deals with an un-agented author, much less an unsolicited manuscript. (There are of course rare exceptions, but mostly those exceptions have names like “Stephen King” or “Joyce Carol Oates”.) Rather, all publishers now deal solely with agents—because agents now control all the authors.
But now that all authors are agented, the publishers have to pay the piper—that is, the literary agent.
The agent will not accept a payment down the line—he wants his cash now. And in fact, a good agent will do his utmost to goose up the advance a publisher pays—up to and including setting up an auction-type situation—so as to secure the maximum advance possible for the author he represents.
From a literary agent’s perspective, it doesn’t matter if a book doesn’t sell through—he’s getting his 15% commission. If Author-X whom he represents lands a million dollar advance, but then a year and a half later X’s novel flops at the bookstores, the literary agent doesn’t care—he got his agency commission. And besides, between when the agent made Author X’s deal with the publisher, and eighteen months later when X’s book comes out, the agent has sold W’s novel, Y’s novel, and Z’s novel, all of them to various publishers, all of them for equally big money.
If half those novels do well, then the agent’s reputation is secure—he can continue demanding big advances for his authors with impunity, regardless of the losses in publishing his deal-making has brought about. And if perchance any publisher hassles him, the agent can shut out that publisher from access to his other authors with the same passive-aggressive spiel that is a requirement for working in publishing: “I’m not sending you my hot new author’s hot new book because I just don’t feel it’s right for your publishing house. It’s just a feeling I have, y’know?”
This whole perverse dance works great when the economy is expanding. Agents get rich, publishers muddle along, while authors get published and paid, often disproportionately to their work (as has happened to me, in fact).
But when the economy contracts—like it is now doing, in the Global Depression—then it becomes the authors and the publishers who suffer.
This is why publishers are shying away from big-ticket first-time novels like John Cole’s Live Through This. Any big-money they shell out, it’ll go strictly to tried-and-true money makers.
Top tier agents like Simonoff are adjusting accordingly, pruning their list of mid-list and first-time authors, and concentrating on either big-money makers, or prestige clients.
Publishers, though, are the worst off: They can’t ditch agents, because agents control the publishers’ raw material, id est, publishable manuscripts. Publishers don’t have the resources to set up their own in-house slush-pile search committee either, so as to find and develop their own bright young talent. (Anyway, the best of the bright young talent know better than to submit to a publisher’s slush-pile—they go searching for an agent instead.)
That’s why publishers are foolishly squeezing the e-book market: They're trying to get some money from somewhere—anywhere.
Looking at the industry from a removed distance, I would think that a long call option model would be the healthiest for the industry as a whole:
In the Long Call Option model, the publisher pays the author a fixed amount of money for the right to publish the novel—in all mediums and venues—for a fixed period of time; say seven years. During that time, all monies go to the publisher, from all venues and mediums, but when the seven years are up, the rights revert back to the author.
Publishers would therefore have an incentive to push all their titles on the market—they would realize that one of those titles is a winning lottery ticket. Which one, they do not know. (Regardless of what anyone says, no one has ever been able to consistently pick an out-of-the-blue winner in publishing, movies, or any other entertainment industry medium.) But one of those books is going to hit the market sweet spot, just like Cold Mountain did, or Harry Potter, or any of the other out-of-nowhere, lottery-winner books.
The obvious drawback to the Long Call Option model is that the author wouldn’t see much money, if his book is a huge hit—but then performance bonuses could be structured into the contract, determined by simple objective metrics, such as weeks on best-seller lists, that would give the author the chance to share the wealth, if his or her book hits the sweet-spot. And of course, for their next book, the author would have the publisher under the gun: “My last book was a big hit, so pay up for this new one—or else I walk to another house.”
The Long Call Option model would probably work—except for literary agents. They’re the ones who would most object to this model—because they too are counting on this winning lottery ticket.
Just like publishers, lit agents also do not really know which of their new authors is going to hit it big—not really. But the law of averages says, one of these guys is gonna be huge—so the agent will hit 15% of this hugeness as well.
So agents—the middlemen in the publishing business—are the ones who would most likely torpedo any serious effort to reform publishing, because they will realize that they are the ones who will most likely lose out on any big hit.
Right now, the publisher loses, if a book fails to sell through. And if it’s a big hit, the agent wins, while the publisher gets crumbs.
That’s the current state of the publishing industry. Because of this agent-centric model of business—which keeps publishers eking out razor-thin margins, while the big bucks go to agents—I predict that, in the Global Depression we’re currently experiencing, most publishers will go bankrupt.
Mercy.
Authors wouldn’t mind if the basic business model were changed in order to save the industry—it’s the agents who would scream bloody murder.
See, years ago, publishers used to deal directly with their authors—literary agents handled only a fraction of all published writers. However, as first mimeograph technology and then photocopying technology spread, the number of manuscripts in circulation skyrocketed.
At the same time, corporate ownership of publishing houses put pressure on costs, making staff cuts inevitable—and inevitably, wiping the place clean of those publishing shock-troops who would slog through the slush pile (the pile of unsolicited manuscripts everyone in publishing has in their office, like miniature Towers of Babble) where the next Great American Novel was hidden.
Starting roughly around 1970, publishers effectively began outsourcing to literary agents the task of wading through and weeding out manuscripts from the slush piles. The corporate squeeze on publishing costs, coupled with photocopying technology that multiplied logarithmically the number of manuscripts in circulation, made this transition happen. As the literary agents took over this task of separating the wheat from the chaff, they—and not the publishers—became the gatekeepers of the talent.
Today, no publisher deals with an un-agented author, much less an unsolicited manuscript. (There are of course rare exceptions, but mostly those exceptions have names like “Stephen King” or “Joyce Carol Oates”.) Rather, all publishers now deal solely with agents—because agents now control all the authors.
But now that all authors are agented, the publishers have to pay the piper—that is, the literary agent.
The agent will not accept a payment down the line—he wants his cash now. And in fact, a good agent will do his utmost to goose up the advance a publisher pays—up to and including setting up an auction-type situation—so as to secure the maximum advance possible for the author he represents.
From a literary agent’s perspective, it doesn’t matter if a book doesn’t sell through—he’s getting his 15% commission. If Author-X whom he represents lands a million dollar advance, but then a year and a half later X’s novel flops at the bookstores, the literary agent doesn’t care—he got his agency commission. And besides, between when the agent made Author X’s deal with the publisher, and eighteen months later when X’s book comes out, the agent has sold W’s novel, Y’s novel, and Z’s novel, all of them to various publishers, all of them for equally big money.
If half those novels do well, then the agent’s reputation is secure—he can continue demanding big advances for his authors with impunity, regardless of the losses in publishing his deal-making has brought about. And if perchance any publisher hassles him, the agent can shut out that publisher from access to his other authors with the same passive-aggressive spiel that is a requirement for working in publishing: “I’m not sending you my hot new author’s hot new book because I just don’t feel it’s right for your publishing house. It’s just a feeling I have, y’know?”
This whole perverse dance works great when the economy is expanding. Agents get rich, publishers muddle along, while authors get published and paid, often disproportionately to their work (as has happened to me, in fact).
But when the economy contracts—like it is now doing, in the Global Depression—then it becomes the authors and the publishers who suffer.
This is why publishers are shying away from big-ticket first-time novels like John Cole’s Live Through This. Any big-money they shell out, it’ll go strictly to tried-and-true money makers.
Top tier agents like Simonoff are adjusting accordingly, pruning their list of mid-list and first-time authors, and concentrating on either big-money makers, or prestige clients.
Publishers, though, are the worst off: They can’t ditch agents, because agents control the publishers’ raw material, id est, publishable manuscripts. Publishers don’t have the resources to set up their own in-house slush-pile search committee either, so as to find and develop their own bright young talent. (Anyway, the best of the bright young talent know better than to submit to a publisher’s slush-pile—they go searching for an agent instead.)
That’s why publishers are foolishly squeezing the e-book market: They're trying to get some money from somewhere—anywhere.
Looking at the industry from a removed distance, I would think that a long call option model would be the healthiest for the industry as a whole:
In the Long Call Option model, the publisher pays the author a fixed amount of money for the right to publish the novel—in all mediums and venues—for a fixed period of time; say seven years. During that time, all monies go to the publisher, from all venues and mediums, but when the seven years are up, the rights revert back to the author.
Publishers would therefore have an incentive to push all their titles on the market—they would realize that one of those titles is a winning lottery ticket. Which one, they do not know. (Regardless of what anyone says, no one has ever been able to consistently pick an out-of-the-blue winner in publishing, movies, or any other entertainment industry medium.) But one of those books is going to hit the market sweet spot, just like Cold Mountain did, or Harry Potter, or any of the other out-of-nowhere, lottery-winner books.
The obvious drawback to the Long Call Option model is that the author wouldn’t see much money, if his book is a huge hit—but then performance bonuses could be structured into the contract, determined by simple objective metrics, such as weeks on best-seller lists, that would give the author the chance to share the wealth, if his or her book hits the sweet-spot. And of course, for their next book, the author would have the publisher under the gun: “My last book was a big hit, so pay up for this new one—or else I walk to another house.”
The Long Call Option model would probably work—except for literary agents. They’re the ones who would most object to this model—because they too are counting on this winning lottery ticket.
Just like publishers, lit agents also do not really know which of their new authors is going to hit it big—not really. But the law of averages says, one of these guys is gonna be huge—so the agent will hit 15% of this hugeness as well.
So agents—the middlemen in the publishing business—are the ones who would most likely torpedo any serious effort to reform publishing, because they will realize that they are the ones who will most likely lose out on any big hit.
Right now, the publisher loses, if a book fails to sell through. And if it’s a big hit, the agent wins, while the publisher gets crumbs.
That’s the current state of the publishing industry. Because of this agent-centric model of business—which keeps publishers eking out razor-thin margins, while the big bucks go to agents—I predict that, in the Global Depression we’re currently experiencing, most publishers will go bankrupt.
Mercy.
Now this all would be just another Global Depression sob story—except for the twist at the end, which potentially might bring about a happy ending, at least for one of our characters:
When we last left him, John Cole had two dynamite commercial thrillers that nobody wanted to publish, and a ruined reputation that left him a publishing business untouchable.
So rather than try to break back into publishing, John Cole has lit out on his own: He’s going for self-publishing.
But the way he’s going about self-publishing might well be the future of the entire business:
In order to sell his work to e-readers, Cole creates a stand-alone web page for each of his novels, and offers up each book in four installments.
When we last left him, John Cole had two dynamite commercial thrillers that nobody wanted to publish, and a ruined reputation that left him a publishing business untouchable.
So rather than try to break back into publishing, John Cole has lit out on his own: He’s going for self-publishing.
But the way he’s going about self-publishing might well be the future of the entire business:
In order to sell his work to e-readers, Cole creates a stand-alone web page for each of his novels, and offers up each book in four installments.
The first installment—which corresponds to 25% of the length of the overall novel—he gives away for free. For free free: No registration process, no giving credit-card numbers, none of that—it’s a no-strings-attached, totally anonymous, no commitment give-away of the first quarter of the book.
However, if the reader wants to finish the book, then he has to pay: A buck for part ii, two bucks for part iii, three bucks for part iv, for a total of $6 for the entire novel. Or alternately, a reader can buy the complete novel in one shot, for $5.
What’s clever about this system is, if the reader doesn’t like the first quarter of the book, then she or he won’t feel they’ve thrown away any money—they got it for free, so they can’t bitch.
But if they like the story, they’ll have no problem shelling out five bucks for the rest of the book. After all, it’s less than a paperback.
This is what John Cole is doing for his first novel, Live Through This—you can find it here.
This pricing structure implicitly recognizes something that mainstream publishers don’t seem to understand: E-books are disposable, and therefore must be priced accordingly.
Everyone who has used a computer for more than five years instinctively knows that computer advances render past technologies and systems obsolete, even unreadable. Everyone knows this because everyone remembers what happened to their drawer full of floppy disks: They became weirdly nostalgic artifacts from a long-ago era called “The Nineties”—and they are completely unreadable today.
Likewise e-books: Eventually—and likely in short order—all e-books will be rendered obsolete somehow. The newest operating system, or the latest cool device—whatever it is, some new technology will come along and make a particular e-book go the way of the floppy disk.
So no-one wants to spend $10 or $15 on an e-book—they know that soon, because of changing technology, that e-book will likely be unreadable. Those $10–$15 will be like money tossed away.
Therefore, losing a whole collection of e-books cannot be a painfully expensive process. If it’s not painless, then people aren’t going to bother with e-books—they’ll just buy phys-books.
But charging five bucks for something which is understood to be disposable, and likely unreadable in 5-10 years? What’s five bucks: Less than a movie ticket, less than a cheapy paperback.
Enh—why not.
Cole is also doing something counter-intuitive with regards to e-book stores, but which I also find really quite clever: He’s bypassing the online e-book stores altogether—he’s not putting his book on Amazon’s Kindle store, or Apple’s iBooks store.
Instead, he’s offering his books directly to the reader—and is thereby taking advantage of the key difference between the real world and the digital world:
See, in the real world, you have to physically travel to buy anything. The local supermarket is down the street. The Bulgari store on Rodeo Drive is way the hell out in Beverly Hills. Saks Fifth Avenue is 3,000 miles from the Bulgari store. Harrod’s is an eight hour plane ride away in London. All very inconveniently far from one another.
There is a reason that business districts and shopping malls were invented: So as to concentrate businesses, and therefore make it easier for customers to shop.
But online, you are equidistant from every other point in the digital world. Every single place is just a click away—and you get there instantly, at no cost.
Therefore, you don’t need to be selling your wares cheek-by-jowl next to the other vendors—you can set up your own shop anywhere, all on your own.
John’s system takes advantage of this obvious insight: He bypasses e-book aggregator sites, as well as the Kindle store or the iBooks store, which are really nothing more than a confusing, crowded dumping ground for books, especially new books by unknown authors.
By not being part of the crowd, and basically standing alone in the middle of the empty desert, he’s betting that he will be noticed more than if he were one more vendor scrambling in a crowded digital bazaar, trying to catch the attention of the passing, disinterested visitors.
Finally, Cole is planning on doing something which the historian in me really admires:
For his future novels, he will self-publish them electronically—but release them in staggered installments. In other words, Cole is going to be publishing his future works like a XIX century novelist—but using XXI century technology.
After all, the great authors of the 1800’s—Balzac, Tolstoy, Dickens, Hugo, Dostoevsky—all published their great novels in serialized pamphlets or magazines. These pamphlets and magazines came out anywhere from every week to every month, in some cases every other month. And many of these pamphlets were self-published by the author. Often the drafts they produced in pamphlet form were rough drafts that they would polish, once the serialized run had ended and they turned to publishing the complete book. This is what Tolstoy did. In point of fact, many of these authors—such as Balzac—wrote the pamphlets without knowing if the novel would be long or short.
Much like a soap opera writer with a new storyline, a lot of those XIX century novelists made it up as they went along. If the first few installments were a hit, then Balzac would write more installments—that’s how he wrote Lost Illusions. If the pamphlets that went out didn’t connect with his audience, then he’d quickly wrap up his story, and move on to the next one.
I don’t know if Cole is planning on doing this—so far, he’s writing the books first, then publishing them in installments. Again, the historian in me says it would be very cool, if Cole made it up as he went along. Stephen King actually tried this a few years back, but it didn’t work out; but my guess is, the technology wasn’t ripe for it at the time. E-reading hadn’t hit the marketplace sweet-spot, as it has since has King’s experiment.
I think this is a great and brave thing Cole is doing: He’s using the wonderful communications technology we now have in order to reconnect with readers in a direct, immediate way. There’ll be nothing separating Cole from his readers: No publisher, no agent, no publicists, no nothing—the reader and the author, separated by nothing more than a computer screen.
I for one fervently hope he succeeds.
Note: Because John Cole was so generous in giving me several full interviews, describing the gory details of his humiliating slog through the publishing biz, I figured I ought to return the favor.
So for the next couple of weeks, I’m going to be running an advertisement for John’s book at the top of my blog. As you can see, I never advertise. When we first spoke, I agreed only to link to Cole’s web site in my piece; I didn’t agree to advertise in any way for him. And I’m getting no payment for this from Cole—it’s just my way of thanking him. GL.
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