Jan 6 2010
Wednesday Midday Links: Simon & Schuster Let’s Go Half of its Sales Staff
For fun, someone has crafted a periodic table of fonts.
In not so fun news, Simon & Schuster has decimated its sales force, leaving only 7 sales representatives and replacing the void with a team of telemarketers. Shelf Awareness first tweeted this last night and had more details in today’s Shelf Awareness.
Simon & Schuster’s sales and marketing group has created a new telemarketing group that will operate from New York headquarters, serve more than 400 independent booksellers, distributors and educational wholesalers, and be in place by February 15. At the same time, the company is letting go about half of its field sales reps, and remaining reps will focus on regions where sales are strongest, “urban areas with a large base of key independent retail, wholesale and educational accounts.”
This is bad for indies and probably libraries who will now have to suffer telemarketing sales pitches for books. Can’t see how this won’t result in a decline in overall hardcover sales.
George Walkley is collating the 2010 predictions by various publishing consultants, observers and insiders. Most everyone is agreeing that enriched content will be important. (I have yet to see enriched content that I perceive has additional value). A couple of predictions that I agree with is “large publishers will cut back or consolidate” and authors with large platforms will start to resemble publishers ala the James Patterson style of co authoring or more.
Publishing Perspectives analyzes the global rank of publishers with Pearson claiming the top spot. Part of Pearson’s success is in the international education field. Pearson bought Simon & Schuster’s educational publishing arm and it is turning out to be a boon for the penguin. Bertelsmann, parent of Random House, has seen a dramatic decline in revenues from 2007 to 2008.
VJ Chambers, an author of YA thrillers, blogged about her self publishing experience and surprisingly, her lower cost digital offering at Smashwords outsold the Kindle. You can read the details of her costs and profit at her blog and an interview with Smashwords here. Chambers isn’t making a living self publishing but she’s experimenting with marketing her writing.
A much talked about editorial (at least on the loops I read) was the Jonathan Galassi op ed piece in the NYTimes. Galassi is the president of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, a house full of prestige and history. Random House published the print books of William Styron and his heirs have chosen to sell the digital rights to Open Road Media, likely because Open Road offered a better royalty deal. Galassi argues that Open Road Media and Styron’s heirs are benefiting from all the editorial and publishing work Random House put into Styron’s works. In Galassi’s argument is the thread that the publishing house creates a better work than the author alone and therefore deserves some kind of renumeration.
The author’s heirs hold the copyright to his work. But should another company be able to issue e-book versions of Random House’s editions without its involvement? An e-book version of Mr. Styron’s "The Confessions of Nat Turner" will contain more than the author’s original words. It will also comprise Mr. Loomis’s editing, as well as all the labor of copy editing, designing and producing, not to mention marketing and sales, that went into making it a desirable candidate for e-book distribution. Mr. Styron’s books took the form they have, are what they are today, not only because of his remarkable genius but also, as he himself acknowledged, because of the dedicated work of those at Random House.
Galassi’s position that the publisher holds some moral copyright to the published work is fascinating, full of breathtaking chutzpah, not based in any sound legal theory, but fascinating nonetheless. It’s interesting that Galassi positions Random House as the victim in this scenario, used and then discarded.
BusinessWeek and Sarah Weinman for Daily Finance both look at ebooks and how publishers are grappling with the economics of ebooks. The trend for pricing is downward and the message of Amazon is that increase in overall volume and reduction of costs will result in a positive for publishers. Publishers seem very uncertain in this market. Maybe at the end of 2010, they’ll have a better idea of what strategies maximize their profits without pissing off their customers. Maybe.
CNN apparently just discovered that there is ebook piracy. The article is very shallow and the reporter obviously has no real knowledge of the issue. In referencing J. K. Rowling’s decision to forego electronic editions, CNN fails to make it known that the Rowling books are all in digital format, illegally. In essence, J.K. Rowling has abandoned the field to the pirates who have made her works available in digital format within hours of the paper release. One of the best solutions to piracy is to ensure that there is a legitimate path for purchase.
Ana Maria Allessi, publisher for Harper Media at HarperCollins, told CNN, “we have to be vigilant in our punishment … but much more attractive is to simply make the technology better, legally.”
Alicia Condon, former Editorial Director at Dorchester is moving to Kensington to take the job left open by the death of Kate Duffy. Leah Hultenschmidt has been appointed the new ED at Dorchester.
Darlynne pointed me to an interesting fiction series called “History of Publishing 2010-2020.” This is a fictional retrospective look at the future of publishing and will be released in a series of blog posts.
The annual Consumer Electronics Show is going on right now and ebook news is starting to trickle out. Gizmodo is my go to place for all things tech and you can follow the posts about ebooks via the ebook tag: http://gizmodo.com/tag/ebooks/. Kindle Dx has gone international. There are new devices being displayed but I think the winner of the CES for ebooks will be any sub $200 color ebook reader.
Sam’s Club is launching a book club and will feature one book a month. This will likely have an Oprah like effect on that book.
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Jan 06, 2010 @ 12:12:44
I’m kind of waiting for some publisher to actually assert this as a legal argument — that another pub’s edition constitutes copyright infringement on the first publisher’s creative contributions to the work (i.e. the moral copyright). Galassi seems right on the cusp.
Jan 06, 2010 @ 12:23:28
Galassi’s point that the publisher contributes greatly to a book via editing, copyediting, etc. is correct. (I know of the occasional book at my employer where we joke that the copyeditor should be listed on the cover as a coauthor.)
However, I’m unconvinced that the publisher’s editing etc. services give it a perpetual claim on that edited version of the work. I’ve never seen, for example, a rights reversion where the publisher only granted the author the right to remarket the original unedited manuscript rather than the version as edited by that publisher.
Jan 06, 2010 @ 12:37:08
Galassi’s OpEd piece made me want to bang my head on my desk. If the print copyright lapsed and the heirs went to another publisher for new print editions to be issued, would he make the same argument? Or would the fact that the new publisher might select a new font, cover art, etc. make a difference to him?
Random House negotiated for whatever rights it may own; whatever it contributed to the work was ancillary to the work itself and in furtherance of RH’s corporate goal (to make money). I find it hard to believe RH is a victim or to feel much sympathy, however much they (or Galassi) may bemoan the changing of technology or business models.
Jan 06, 2010 @ 12:48:58
Can someone clarify for me what the sales force for Simon & Shuster does? They sell books to resellers, like Amazon and BAM? I am under the impression that Libraries usually have personnel assigned to buying books for them.
I guess I kind of see what they would be doing…are they negotiating the sales contracts, or just suggesting specific books/authors tailored to the various resellers (indy vs. B&N vs. Amazon)?
Jan 06, 2010 @ 13:08:10
I read Galassi's op-ed a few days ago and had smoke coming out my ears. As they say on Top Gear When Galassi comes to power, authors will become nothing more than fore-hire slaves of publishers..
I know that there are already publishers who function this way (they own the copyright), but I’m guessing that if this were to become the norm, many authors would opt to either self-publish or to form publishing co-ops (as some already have). I believe Jane has already pointed this option out as something that may well become a trend in the future.
Jan 06, 2010 @ 13:18:24
@RStewie: My experience is that the sales people call on all or any stores. The little independent I worked for had in-store meetings with publishers’ reps who provided ARCs and catalogs of new books. They talked about publishing happenings–who had acquired whom, who left which house, who was editing whom–and negotiated pricing on orders. The store’s owner also had the opportunity to give feedback to the publisher.
I’m sorry to see this happening as it’s another contact/conversation dropped or diminished.
Jan 06, 2010 @ 13:42:01
We’ve already seen an increase in telemarketing calls where I work. Mostly trying to convince us to buy our libraries really expensive reference sets (yeah, with what money?) that now sit on shelves and collect dust. What’s a few more phone calls? I’ll just find myself saying “Thanks, but no thanks” more often.
Re: Sam’s Club – Costco already has a “book club” of sorts. I live in an area where Costco is king, but honestly their book club is nowhere near Oprah status. That said, Sam’s Club is affiliated with WalMart – so maybe it’ll be a different story?
Jan 06, 2010 @ 13:47:15
As far as publishers not pissing readers off, I note that Krentz’s Running Hot (MM release of 2009 book) is back in the traditional format mass market size and price, and not in the bastardized (and more expensive) 7.4 x 4.1 inch size. The previous two books in this series, “White Lies” and “Sizzle and Burn” were in the bastard size and price.
I hope this means that trend is over.
Jan 06, 2010 @ 13:58:13
This makes me so happy. I hate that freakin’ stupid Venti!
Jan 06, 2010 @ 19:49:20
Have to agree on the enriched content. I really like HTML in documents for reading footnotes and endnotes, but that is about it.
The Patterson thing though reminds me of the trend in SF that started over a decade or more of coauthors. One would be a better selling name, the other a better writer. It was usually pretty easy to tell who did most of the actual writing. But at least you know who was involved with writing the book before putting your money down.
As for Galassi, if Random House wanted to keep Styron’s works in their house then I would have thought they would have offered a better deal than Open Road Media. Also, let’s try that argument on a living author and see what happens.
Jan 06, 2010 @ 20:56:25
Westlaw just laid off a bunch of people (250 overall), including 5 of their library relations staff. In their case, this means they’ll have fewer channels for good information to get back to the powers that be.
I’m sad to see publishers laying off the people who can help both the bookstores/libraries and the publisher improve their business model. It looks like it’s a trend across publishing.
Stumbling Over Chaos :: Whole lotta linkity goin’ on
Jan 10, 2010 @ 13:53:34
[...] Some good publishing industry info (and a link to the periodic table of fonts) in Dear Author’s Wednesday news post. [...]