I’m Not The Jerk In E-book Pricing, And Trunk Novels
I’ve been getting a lot of questions about some things, so I might as well do a blog post.
* Every time I say “trunk novel”, someone asks what that is. A trunk novel is a term for a novel that won’t ever escape the inside of a trunk. It’s a piece a writer works on solely for his/her own gratification, one that stands little chance of every being published, mostly because the writer understands it’s horrible. It’s the writing version of junk food. I love my trunk novels. (Yes. That’s plural.) Often I work on them during breaks from other books. They’re sort of dry runs, practice to keep me in the game. It can also mean a trunk novel that gets published after a writer is famous, or famous and dead.
* OK, guys, let’s get serious. Lots of you are emailing me telling me that various e-book distributors are protesting publishers’ move to agency pricing by pulling my books. You invariably ask me to “talk to the publishers” and solve this problem.
I cannot do that. Furthermore, I will not even consider it and the very thought makes me cranky.
First, the publishers have little control over whether the distributors carry their books. Publishers and distributors are two separate companies and make their own decisions. Second, I would not dream of coming down on the side of the distributors on this issue, for the simple fact that the publishers’ interests in this case align with my own. The agency pricing model gives writers a better deal, and it keeps the books around for longer. The distributors want to profit at the expense of the writers (who produce the content) and the publishers (who invest in quality control and on the chance that the content will made the money back for them).
In short, THE PUBLISHERS ARE NOT THE ENEMY HERE, AND THE WRITERS ARE NOT THE ENEMY EITHER.
It is perfectly natural for the distributors to want to maximize their profits, or to keep going with business models that benefit them at the expense of the writers or publishers. They’re businesses, maximizing their profits is what they DO. But neither I nor the publishers should take the rap for it. Because it is also well within publishers’ rights to say, “We invest in bringing this content to the marketplace. We pay the advance, we provide the editing and quality control, we provide the art and marketing, and we will set the price for it as we see fit.” And in this one case, the publishers’ views align nicely with the rights and views of the writers producing the books in the first damn place. Professional writers are OF COURSE going to support their publishers in seeking the pricing and policies that grant them a living wage (or a close approximation of one). Or, to be more precise, that maximize the chances that a writer can afford to continue writing because the financial rewards are enough to let them scrape by. (This is where I go off on my “just because you’re published doesn’t mean you’re rich” rant. I’ll save that for another day.)
The distributors’ response–yanking certain publishers’ goods in order to pressure them into dropping the agency pricing model–is greedy and short-sighted in the extreme. Brick and mortar stores, e-book sites like Fictionwise, other sites like Amazon, are DISTRIBUTORS. The whole purpose of these companies is to distribute the goods that people want to buy, in this case, books. If they do not distribute, people should get annoyed and find somewhere else to shop. Distributors shoot themselves in the foot in these kinds of situations, despite their PR working overtime (usually through their customer platforms) to convince customers that someone else (the big bad publishers, the writers) are to blame.
I understand people contact the writers because we are the “face” of our books. People write to me about all sorts of things I have zero control over, like cover prices or font sizes or distribution to foreign countries or or or…you get the idea. It irks me that there are problems I can’t solve for the readers or to facilitate their enjoyment, but that’s life.
But please, please, dear Readers, don’t jump on me because a distributor is kicking and screaming over the e-book pricing model that may very well make or break an author’s chances to keep bringing these books to you. (Although, really, e-books are such a small part of total book sales…even though it doesn’t seem like it to people on the Internet.) Don’t jump on my publisher, or THE publishers, either. The publisher wants me to keep writing as much as you do; the publisher wants you to have the books as much as I do and you do. It’s the distributor who doesn’t want agency pricing because it gives the publisher and writer a bigger slice of the profits (profits that distributors have grown accustomed to in the last five-ten years or so) that deserves your ire. They are the ones you should be demanding an answer from–an honest answer, not “the big bad publishers are picking on poor little us, waaaah!”
Honestly, if it was the publisher being an asshole, I’d tell you. If it was me being an asshole, I’d admit it.
In this case, it’s neither. We’re not the assholes here, and filling up my email inbox with rants about how I need to get on the publisher and yell at them do not help. I know you’re frustrated. I’m frustrated too, as you can probably tell. I have no choice but to sit tight and wait for it to all shake out, since there is literally nothing I can do. In this case, the publishers are going into battle on behalf of writers. Well, it’s on behalf of their own profits, but it’s benefiting writers. Fair enough.
Now I’ve got to go hop on the treadmill and work all this adrenaline anger off.
See you around.
PS: Behave in the comments, please. Thanks.
Related posts:
Tags: Oh Holy No..., shooting from the hip, we are not amused
April 29th, 2010 at 8:55 am
Here, here. As someone whose job it is to physically makes the books that go out to the printers/ebooks/whatever it infuriates me when people say that it takes less money to make an e-book.
No, the same time and effort in editing, design, production goes into making an e-book. These distributors are essentially trying to control, not only how much the author makes, but how much the average Joe makes who spends countless hours making sure the product going out is the best it can be after authors like you have put so much into it.
If people really knew how much goes into physically making a book they would see that this Amazon nonsense hurts regular, hard-working people, not some corporate bigwig.
April 29th, 2010 at 8:58 am
This. A thousand times this. Thank you so much for saying it.
April 29th, 2010 at 9:01 am
As a small-press publisher, THANK YOU. The agency model is good news for writers and publishers alike, and distributors are just going to have to come to terms with that. After all, if writers can’t make enough money to live, they can’t generate content. If publishers can’t make enough to recoup development costs, they can’t develop content.
Can’t generate content, can’t develop content…what is there for the distributors to distribute? No content, no cash. Fighting dirty on this is just shooting themselves in the foot.
April 29th, 2010 at 9:01 am
In Australia, paperbacks have, I believe, hit almost $30 a pop. (The last book I have from home was priced $18.95, and I bought it about 10 years ago)
We’ve got it easy here
<3
April 29th, 2010 at 9:11 am
Hi Lili,
Thank you for talking about this. I’m getting a lot of these emails too.
April 29th, 2010 at 9:14 am
@Laurel $30 a pop for a paperback? Which bright spark thought up THAT pricing scheme down under? Do people even buy books in Aus at that price?
Re eBooks: The biggest problem I have with eBooks is ownership. When you “buy” an eBook from some place like Amazon.com, Barnes&Noble.com, or even our Canadian Kobo.com, you DO NOT OWN the book. You’re, in essence, RENTING the book from them while you read it. And after you’ve read it, the book ceases to have a monetary value.
What *I* want to see is eBooks bundled with physical books. That way I actually OWN something that can be re-sold, given away, kept on my shelf as a trophy, or whatever.
eBooks have no value.
April 29th, 2010 at 10:14 am
Excellent, excellent post! One of the clearest explanations I’ve read. May I link to it?
April 29th, 2010 at 10:31 am
Feel free, Riley. Thanks.
April 29th, 2010 at 10:45 am
Awesome, thank you!!!
April 29th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
Authors dont have control over cover or format either in most cases.
amazon is greedy, and a bully.
April 29th, 2010 at 1:44 pm
Did any of these problems come up before Amazon got to become a near monopoly?
How does the reduction in number of bookstores (the big and the small) in this country affect things?
Not playing for one side or the other and certainly not taking sides against writers without whom I wouldn’t get books at all but such issues rarely tend to have one obvious bad guy who only does wrong. Things tend to be more complex than that.
I simply don’t know enough about the whole industry (next to nothing actually) to do other than ask.
April 29th, 2010 at 3:02 pm
This is pretty much the first/only post I’ve ever actually replied to (minus a few replies to contests), but every time I read a post like this I get really annoyed – and maybe that’s because I haven’t ever been a position where I receive tons of these emails , nor have I had the opportunity to read the actual content of them in order to get a feel for the tone/intent of said emails/letters received, and finally because I’ve never been one to consider (let alone bother) contacting an author or anyone else about any such an issue…..
With that said, posts like this one do nothing for me other than to lower my previously HIGH opinion of an author (obviously my opinion of the author is high and I enjoy reading their books or else I wouldn’t bother following or reading/skimming any of their posts let alone purchasing their books).
Have you ever considered that the emails you are receiving aren’t meant as an attack against you or a publisher, nor are they centered around the issue of the “price” for which your books are sold…but instead should be viewed as a compliment that someone enjoys your writing enough to take the time to contact someone, ANYONE, in order to find a way to obtain/purchase this writing when their ability to do so has been taken away??
Instead of claiming that your readers are calling you or your publisher an asshole (which may be the case, but whenever I read posts on this issue, I’ve never gotten that impression) and focusing on pricing, maybe you should instead post possible solutions by directing them to sources that HAVEN’T pulled your books. That way, they can still purchase the book if they believe it will be worth the price charged. Economics is usually a wonderful thing. Supply and demand, on the norm, have a way of leveling the prices of most items to that which most people are willing to pay…
AND…as an author and/or a publisher, shouldn’t you want to “talk to someone and fix this issue” anyhow? Rather than claiming you “will not even consider” doing it and the very thought makes cranky? How the hell are you supposed to make any money if everyone pulls your books? Just because you side with one party over another doesn’t mean you shouldn’t want to get involved in creating a solution both parties can agree to – ESPECIALLY when the outcome of that solution has such a huge impact on you…that of enabling your fans to purchase your work (regardless of the price agreed on)!!
Anyhow, I’ve said my peace. I’m very surprised that I bothered to write this response, considering its something I’ve never done before…However, I just think that posts like this one lose sight of the fact that a “fan” wouldn’t bother contacting them about this issue if they weren’t willing to show support (monetarily or otherwise) for that author’s work.
April 30th, 2010 at 2:22 am
@ Dee… Slow down tiger. Lilith was merely saying, stop flooding my inbox, I cannot do a thing about it. And she really can’t. For that to happen she’d had to be a one-woman empire, controlling everything from the writing to the distribution, which I’m certain no writer has the time for. She then explained all the ins and outs and why it’s irking her and it’s all perfectly valid.
It’s not up to Lilith to come up with the solutions to the problems the distributors are causing.
See it this way, you are a writer, it’s your sole income and suddenly you’re getting less money because the distributor wants to make a bigger profit. A profit he wouldn’t see a cent of if you hadn’t written the book in the first place. And take it a step further, if writers can’t make a living off writing, there won’t be very many books to buy.
Remember: It’s up to us as consumers to keep the suppliers honest, because we all know they cannot do it themselves. If an author’s books are dropped by one distibutor because they are not prepared to pay the ferryman as it were, well then we just have to move on to the next one. They’ll catch on very quickly that they’re losing business and make it available again. And really, if ebooks aren’t available, just go back to buying an old fashioned book. There’s nothing as satisfying as cracking the spine of a new book.
April 30th, 2010 at 5:25 am
Laurel,
Way more than that. Standard trade paperback price is $33. About $22 or so for MMPB.
Serenity,
Sorry, but I doubt you will talk people that want mp3s that are not available into buying LPs, either.
Also, in the real world most of us live in, this sort of thing is happening: Some not so bright publishers sell through one outlet. Have dispute. Books no longer on sale *anywhere*. How do you buy them elsewhere in that case?
Or they’ll let say Apple or Barnes and Noble sell them, and no-one else, which means no-one outside the USA can ever buy them.
On the whole agency thing. It is also possible that this will cause a considerable sales decline. If that happens, we would expect that there should be no complaints from the publisher/writer camp then?
April 30th, 2010 at 7:45 am
Thank you, Serenity.
April 30th, 2010 at 4:32 pm
[...] Yesterday I talked about trunk novels and e-book pricing. I am monitoring the comments pretty closely, because there has been trollage. I laugh quietly at [...]
May 1st, 2010 at 8:35 pm
Check out Eric Flint and Jim Baen for more arguments about e-books and pricing. Point of view of an author and a small publisher. Eric goes VERY deep into the various sales and pricing models (a little deep for me) but he has clearly done a lot of research on the subject – including tracking sales. Interesting reading if you read as much as I do.
May 3rd, 2010 at 6:30 am
Thank you for clarifying, Lilith. I was recently annoyed with the Sony library trying to find an Anne Bishop book. They had all by one in the series and that one was only available in Canada. I called the Sony people to figure it out. It was the same reason you stated above, they were having issues between the agreement with the publisher. I went elsewhere to shop.
I was actually quite stunned that you are getting emails to that extent regarding this. I’ve read a few other posts about the issue and it seems pretty straight forward. It seems obvious who to blame. I don’t think it ever crossed my mind at any point to question the authors regarding it.
I have a thing for books. I think I’ve read novels 12 since last month. You’re one of my favorites. I also have secret desires to be a writer though -in my heart- I think everything I have is a trunk piece. I have researched the publishing and distributing processes just incase there’s some gem that comes from my work. That said, I can grasp the fortitude and commitment writing takes and some of the powerlessness writers have when their work is taken to print.
Since I seem to be getting long-winded, I just wanted to say in closing; you’re doing a great job and, if it comes to it, I’d scour the globe to read and support your work.
May 5th, 2010 at 7:58 am
[...] More on this at Lili Saintcrow. [...]
May 6th, 2010 at 5:44 am
As just a plain old reader here I have to say I have a Kindle and just realized that some of my favorite authors newest books are not being made available. I NEVER thought to blame the author or the publisher. I always put the blame squarely on Amazon! I figured it had to do with $$$$ and while I am not happy about it, I can go out buy the books with coupons or at a discount or get them from my library. Just think of the Aussies out there who pay so much and wait so long for all the goodies we can get here on the day they are released.
May 6th, 2010 at 11:46 am
I have to agree with Dee on this. The same way authors don’t want to open their inbox to a bunch of complaints, I don’t want to read an author’s blog and feel like I am being gotten on to for something. There are much nicer ways to phrase your frustration. Many authors I read are putting up posts like this and it is just as frustrating.
Amazon is not stopping ebook sales. If they had the right to sell these books right now they would – because they would be making money off of them. Penguin won’t let them sell the books because the two can’t/won’t come to an agreement. Is it all Penguin’s fault? No, but it isn’t all Amazon’s fault either but most authors want their readers to believe it is.
Maybe I have a hard time reading blogs like this because I disagree and think Amazon should be able to price books any way they want. I can go over to Target or Walmart right now and buy brand new books at a discount. Why should that be any different for my Kindle?
May 7th, 2010 at 2:07 pm
Sarah F and Dee:
I think that you have both misinterpreted the author’s purpose in posting. It’s not to convince you that Amazon is evil or that the publisher is angelic (we all know how false that dichotomy is when it comes to business) but rather to point out that the author has no control. So e-mails to the author will do nothing but make the author frustrated and angry that a situation beyond their control is 1) upsetting and inconveniencing their fans [who they love, by the way] and 2) making them feel guilty because they can’t do more.
I would say that Lilith is being very direct and calm about this issue. Did you realize that, as well as writing authors e-mails, people are giving 1-star reviews to books because they are not available for the Kindle? There is some mistaken impression that this is a logical means of voicing their discontent about the lack of e-book format. Which I hope everyone can agree is just insane since reviews are for content and not for format!
Anyway, to finish, thank you for the post, Lilith. I hope that the issues are resolved so that you and your fans don’t have to deal with this any longer. And have a great weekend!