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- Big four show sales drop
- Battle of the titans
- Agents feeling the pain
- Better news from the UK
- 2009's troubled times continue in the US
- E-books spark crisis
- Is this a revival of the short story?
- No country for old typewriters
- Borders UK goes into administration
- So what's the Google Settlement all about?
- Google Settlement agreed
- The tragic saga of a bestselling author
- Too much, too fast
- UK versus US readers
- A sober Frankfurt
- The Kindle goes global
- It's Frankfurt time again
- Authors' advances slashed
- Has Dan Brown hastened the tipping-point?
- Strong Booker shortlist - does Wolf Hall lead the pack?
- Google goes for broke
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8 February 2010
Big four show sales drop
Figures for 2009 just released by the big UK
publishers show just how tough a time they had and what a difficult book market
we’ve had in the past year.
Seven of the top UK publishers had negative sales
growth last year measured by the Total Consumer Market figures, as did half of
the top 20 publishers. The only one of the top four to do well was the market
leader Hachette and that was because of Stephenie Meyer, whose £29.4m ($46m) of
sales accounted for an extraordinary 10.2% of the group’s total UK sales.
This had the effect of putting Hachette well ahead of its rival Random House,
giving it a 2.7% lead with a 16.4% market share.
Random House’s 9.2% drop in value of sales meant that
it put £24.4m ($38.22m) less through the tills last year, in spite of having a
new Dan Brown in the autumn. HarperCollins also did less well, down .7% with
£15.2m ($23.81m) less in sales, whilst Penguin’s sales shrunk by .3%.
Surprisingly in this age of corporations getting
larger, the big four showed a drop to 47.4% for their cumulative share, the
lowest since 2005. The Total Consumer Market showed a contraction of 1.2% in
value, down to £1.752bn ($2.74bn). This was not as bad as 2008, when the drop
was 1.5%, but it was still an unwelcome contraction.
In the States Meyer also dominated sales, selling more
than 10 million books over the year, which was however less than the 15 million
she sold in 2008. Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol sold 2,854,658, more than
any of her individual titles, but Meyer made a bigger impression on the figures
than Brown because she had four books in the top ten.
Publishers undoubtedly had a hard time and the
redundancies made by the big companies early in 2009 must have seemed necessary
later in the year. It’s easy to understand why, with strong pressure on
discounts from both Amazon and the supermarkets, publishers chose to cut
overheads and lists to ensure that they survived the recession.
For authors this has been even harder. Many
published authors who are not major bestsellers but have made a steady
livelihood from writing are finding that they can no longer find a publisher.
Those who can are receiving lower advances and, generally speaking, cannot move
elsewhere as they have nowhere else to go.
The death of the midlist has been long lamented, but
this was the year when the impact hit with a sickening thud and now it really is
very hard to find a home for a manuscript which is good and shows promise but is
not instant bestseller material. It is worth dwelling on the figures mentioned
above as they make the publishers’ decisions to cut their lists more
comprehensible. In this recession you have to cut out anything which is not
paying its way and concentrate on what seems more likely to work. Even that is
not necessarily a recipe for survival, since, as publishers found last autumn,
some expensive books, particularly celebrity biography, failed to perform.
For the agents this means there has been a quiet
culling going on, so some authors have lost both their publisher and their
agent. Agents are being very careful about taking on new clients and have to
have a really clear reason for doing so.
So, how long does this go on for? That’s really the
$64 million question and relates to the recession as a whole. In the end
publishers need new books and they have to invest in new authors, so the time
will come when they will have to start buying more aggressively. The other thing
is not to let the problems of the big publishers, which have large overheads and
a certain amount of inflexibility built into their size ,
to obscure the fact that small publishers still have many opportunities and
self-publishers can use the Internet to publicise their own work.
The overall drop in book sales in the UK in 2009 was
only 1.2% in value, suggesting, particularly since this was a year of heavy
discounting, that most book buyers kept on buying pretty steadily. Perhaps they
relied on books passed on by friends and family a bit more, but most book-buyers
seem to have regarded their book purchases as essential. Long may this
continue.
Back to Top
1 February 2010
Battle of the titans
This has been one of those weeks when there’s been
so much happening that it’s difficult to cover it in a single column. Apple has
broken the news of its iPad and, amidst the focus on that, Amazon has already
started to fight back. This could be a turning-point and how publishing, books
and authors come out of all this is hard to predict.
Steve Jobs’ unveiling of the iPad to an excited
world caused no great surprise, as the new device had been comprehensively
trailed. The iPad, which starts at $499, is a half-inch thick tablet
computer with a 9.7 inch (25 cm) touchscreen. It will compete with other
e-readers such as Amazon's Kindle, which currently sells for $259, and Barnes
and Noble's Nook device.
Criticisms from tech reviewers have mostly focused on
its over-bright screen, which may well making reading in bed possible, but will
also make it very tiring on the eyes.
Claudine Beaumont, Telegraph
technology editor,
commented that it ‘looks exactly like a giant iPhone, right down to the
"home" button at the bottom of its 9.7 in touch-screen.’ But she added, ‘the
best feature is iBooks, the e-book reading software that knocks Amazon’s Kindle
and Sony’s Reader into a cocked hat. Novels are beautifully presented . . .
The pages of the books resemble proper printed pages, with a sense of texture
and authenticity to them. Turning pages is achieved with a swiping gesture, or a
single tap in the right-hand margins. Downloading books is incredibly easy too.’
Apple have been vague about when the iPad might be
available outside the US, which probably means a delayed launch whilst they sort
out the logistics and focus on beating the competition in the all-important US
home market.
Tim Cooper, Director of Direct and Digital Marketing
at Mills and Boon, said: ‘It looks great, fundamentally it's going to make a
pretty big difference. It's fantastic news for publishers and the consumers as
well, it must have sent a few shivers down the spines of other companies with
e-reading devices. At that price point and with those multimedia opportunities,
it's great for everyone. I think this will definitely help the e-book market.’
Whether his enthusiasm will be shared amongst the
publishing community remains to be seen, but Publishers Lunch commented
that: ‘For book publishers as important as the iBookstore (and a potential
worldwide rollout) is the business model behind it, which the biggest trade
publishers see as an opportunity to reset the terms of business in the
still-emerging ebookmarket.’
And that was certainly the way Amazon saw it, as a
possible threat. Jeff Bezos chose this moment to announce a huge surge in sales
through the Kindle. When the company has both editions, he announced that it has
been selling 6 Kindle books for every 10 physical books, an amazing claim
which indicates the market is achieving much faster conversion to e-books than
most people would have predicted.
Amazon had a huge fourth quarter, with total sales
of $9.52 billion, an astounding 42% higher than for the same quarter a year ago.
Their net US income is up 71% at $384 million, but their net international
income is now even larger. Figures from the International Digital Publishers
forum, held in New York last week, suggested that Bezos is right though, as it
was announced that wholesale revenue from e-book sales in the US almost
tripled in the third quarter of 2009 to $46.5 million, compared with the same
quarter in 2008.
So it’s a battle of the titans which is now holding
the book world in its grip. Apple has a huge base of supporters in the
people using the 75 million iPhones and iPod Touches they’ve already sold. It
also has its new iBooks from iTunes, which will enable people to download ebooks
directly onto their iPad.
Amazon has a huge customer base across the world, an
enormous range of merchandise taking it far beyond books, and is extremely
aggressive in support of its interests. The very latest news is that all the
books and e-books published by the Macmillan group in the US had their buy
buttons removed on Friday because they tried to switch to a new model of e-book
sales which would enable publishers to set higher prices than Amazon’s attempted
standard of $9.95.
It looks like authors’ interests have to be with
publishers on this one, even though publishers and authors do not currently
agree on e-book royalties. Otherwise the risk is that the e-book threatens to
undercut hardback editions and make books available even more cheaply – leaving
the author potentially even further out in the cold.
25 January 2010
Agents feeling the pain
So are agents really feeling the pinch now? Long
regarded as the fats cats of the industry, there are signs that the London
agency constituency is really beginning to join in the pain. You cannot
escape the conclusion that there will be redundancies, closures and mergers of
agencies. Independent agents have few enough overheads in any case and will cut
back on the new authors they take on. But some of the larger agencies have
become quite big businesses and they will find it difficult to sustain their
cost bases.
A number of big London agencies made substantial
losses last year, some of them, curiously in the light of the recession, because
they expanded and took on more staff. The biggest example of this is the new
agency, United Artists, which split off from PFD taking no less than 80 staff
with them, including almost all the agents and a great many of their authors.
This meant they had no backlist but only the new books from these authors and
led to a loss of £2m on sales of £6m. PFD itself has the opposite problem, with
all the backlist but relatively few authors producing new books, so is in the
process of rebuilding itself.
The second biggest agency in staff terms, Curtis
Brown, rather astonishingly in a year of such deep recession went from 61 staff
to 70, and moved from a profit to a small loss.
As we have repeatedly pointed out, the authors on
whom these agencies depend are suffering worse, with advances down and many
previously published authors finding that they no longer have a publisher.
In particular, literary first novelists are getting very small advances, with it
being regarded as difficult enough to publish them, without adding to the risk
with the likelihood of unearned advances.
To add to the pain, freelance journalism budgets have
been cut and there is no longer the same flow of freelance income as there used
to be, nor is it so well-paid. Literary editors have been decimated and the
space allocated to books cut across both the UK and the US, as the print media
struggle to resolve the challenge of the Internet. Many writers, especially
those who deal in non-fiction, have in the past supplemented their income by
journalism, unfortunately that option is no longer available to the same degree.
Curiously, the other means of income for writers is
booming. Creative writing has been a growth industry for the whole of the last
decade and a large proportion of poets in particular now support themselves by
teaching writers in universities and evening classes. The MA in Creative Writing
may be creating more writers than the market can sustain, but at least it’s also
keeping the wolf from the door and enabling writers of all kinds to make a
living which will support their own writing.
In the meantime the advice still is: don’t give up
the day job.
18 January 2010
Better news from the UK
Last week’s News Review was headlined
2009's troubled times continue in the US and it’s good to be
able to report a somewhat better picture in the UK, although there is
undoubtedly more pain to come in 2010.
2009 was down just 1.2% down in value and only 0.5%
down in volume in a year which has seen a contraction in the overall economy of
5%, so the book trade can justifiably claim that book sales have held up
reasonably well. It’s been patchy though and the high street is in real
trouble, with the closure of Borders UK removing a large chunk of retail. The
General Retail Market measure, which covers the high street, showed sales
value falling by 7%, a catastrophic decrease easily explained by the
increase in internet and supermarket sales.
Waterstone’s had such a disastrous Christmas that its
first act in 2010 has been to replace its well-liked chief executive Gerry
Johnson by someone who is viewed as a tougher manager.
One cheerful bit of news is that indie bookshops
have fared well during the all-important Christmas selling-period. In a
Bookseller survey 54% of those surveyed also said sales were up in 2009, a
surprisingly good result in view of the recession. Although there have been some
casualties during the year, the independent bookshops which have survived the
recession thus far are proving that good customer service is still attractive to
a substantial book-buying audience.
One independent, Hereward Corbett of the
Yellow-Lighted Bookshop in Tetbury, Gloucestershire commented that: ‘They
seemed to be very happy to buy from us at full price when they could go down the
road and buy the same books for half price or less.’ Perhaps book-buyers are
beginning to realise that they need to support their local bookshop if it is to
survive.
So, things could be worse and the general feeling of
gloom and panic about e-books and digitisation is not supported by what is
currently going on in the market-place. Readers are still buying books,
although perhaps from different places, and there is no immediate prospect of
the book market collapsing or being diverted from print books to e-books on a
massive scale.
Having said that, dealing with the major changes going
on at the same time as dealing with a recessionary market will require
publishers to employ both ingenuity and innovation on a major scale. The view
going forward has been well-summarised by Gail Rebuck, charimain and CEO of
Random House UK, in the Bookseller:
‘The industry is going through a tectonic shift (to
digital) and the next five years will be absolutely crucial for publishers. We
will see the beginnings of a recovery, though not massive growth on the physical
side, and the investment will be in new skills for staff. There are
opportunities and we need to reskill ourselves. All publishers must be more
creative and innovative than ever while keeping their core business, which is
quite a complicated task.’
11 January 2010
2009's troubled times continue in the US
So how does the world look as we venture forth into
the new decade? This week we’ll look at the US and next week at the UK
publishing worlds in an attempt to assess how the turmoil in the book trade is
affecting writers.
Bowker’s PubTrack Consumer service reminded us that
the recession is still with us by publishing research which showed that
Americans are buying fewer books because of the economic downturn, and purchase
cheaper books when they do buy. It also found that 19% of US consumers were
either buying more used books or swapping books with others. 34% of Americans
have reduced the number of books they are buying. They are buying fewer
hardbacks and more paperbacks, and only buying books that are being sold at
steep discounts or that are on sale.
Knocking on the head a favourite publishing theory
that books do well in recession, only 2% of consumers said that they were
choosing to buy books as an alternative to more expensive kinds of
entertainment. So, green shoots of recovery notwithstanding, the American book
trade is still experiencing tough times.
The American trade journal Publishers’ Weekly
commented that:
‘The end of 2009 marked the end of both a challenging
year and a difficult decade for publishers. While it would be nice to think the
worst is over, don't bet on it. As we look back at a year marked by job
losses—and at a decade roiled by technology - we can't help
thinking that tough times are likely to linger a bit longer. To paraphrase
Winston Churchill, for book publishers, the end of 2009 is not the end of a
difficult period. It is not even the beginning of the end. With any luck,
however, it may be the end of the beginning…
‘ No question, this was a
difficult year for the book business, and many of the year's problems remain.
For one, the effects of the 2009 recession are about to be felt in earnest in
2010 library budgets, and that's one very big strike against a meaningful
publishing industry rebound in the coming months. Despite gaudy, triple-digit
growth, e-books still represent less than 5% of publishing revenues, so few are
banking on digital revenues to bolster sagging bottom lines in the near future.
And from courtrooms to boardrooms, some central, controversial issues remain
unresolved.’
The recession hit harder in the US book business than
it did in the UK. In 2009 US publishers are estimated to have
shed between 7% and 10% of their workforce. Barnes and Noble launched the Nook
to counter Amazon’s Kindle and the other big bookselling chain, Borders, managed
to stagger on, with massive cost-cutting and reduction of debt not achieving the
hoped-for effect because of a big drop in sales.
Consumers held on to their money and it remains to
be seen whether with the recession easing people will go back to book-buying.
And of course, everyone focused on digital. This was
the year of the Google Settlement and rapid growth in sales relating to Amazon’s
Kindle, with the company reporting that e-book sales overtook print copy sales
for the first time on Christmas day, presumably as a result of the instant
gratification that digital download allows.
So what about writers? It’s hard to see that the
current situation in traditional US publishing offers much cheer. Lists have
been pruned back and publishers are very wary of taking any chances. In the US
however self-publishing has grown fast and there has been a boom during the last
decade. The big publishers don’t seem to have such a grip on the book business
as they used to, as corporations fare worse in times of recession because of
their large cost base and lack of flexibility.
Only the ending of the recession will change this
radically and even then it seems likely that the big publishers will not go back
to the same publishing output, as publishing fewer books is an attractive
proposition to the corporate mind. They do though have to publish something
to stay in business, so at some point lack of forward titles will force a
reassessment of restricted buying policies. But in the meantime writers
should keep working on their writing, and look at other possibilities such as
the Internet and self-publishing.
21 December 2009
E-books spark crisis
This has been a week of dramatic developments in the publishing world, as
publishers scramble to work out how to navigate a completely new playing field.
The debate centres around four crucial issues: who controls e-book rights, the
timing of e-book editions and what the prices and royalty rates for e-books
should be.
Lest you should think that none of this seems particularly important to you
as a writer or reader, here’s the way the latest news was reported by Robert
McCrum on the Guardian website:
‘They say the fluttering of a butterfly's wing in the Amazon rainforest
can cause a hurricane in the northern hemisphere. Stephen Covey's decision to
move from his traditional, conventional publisher, Simon and Schuster, to
Rosetta Books, an electronic book publisher working in association with Amazon,
may turn out to be one of those moments in the history of book publishing when
everything changed and wild forces were released into the creative environment.’
McCrum may well be right and it’s an interesting footnote, which long-term
readers of News Review may remember, that on 26 March 2001 under the
heading Who owns e-book rights? Random House sues Rosetta Books News
Review reported that:
‘Random House, the Bertelsmann-owned largest publisher in the world, is
suing the Internet start-up Rosetta Books for copyright infringement. Rosetta
Books was set up recently to sell e-book versions of modern classics through its
website. The basic premise of Random’s suit is that its existing contracts with
the authors give it the exclusive right to publish in book form, which the
publisher maintains includes e-book formats.
‘Titles by major authors, including William Styron, Kurt Vonnegut and Robert
Parker, are involved. Rosetta made deals direct with the authors through their
agents. The case revolves around the question of whether or not Random’s
original purchase of rights covers e-books. Since the contracts for the books
involved are all pre-1995, they contain no specific mention of e-books or e-book
rights. The authors’ agents therefore claim that these rights are reserved by
the author and that the authors are not infringing their contracts with Random
House by selling them to Rosetta Books.’
Well, it seems that Random House US, which lost its case in 2002, has
decided to use the same argument again in an effort to protect their rights, in
what looks like a straight repeat of history. But that’s not quite right, as the
book world has shifted, and e-book rights are now not just a theoretical threat
or opportunity but something for which there is a means of delivery, with the
development of e-readers, and also a market which will yield immediate and
possibly huge sales.
Random House chief executive Marcus Dohle’s letter last week to literary
agents claimed that older contracts granting rights to publish "in all editions"
grant electronic rights to the publisher. The US Authors’ Guild has been quick
to respond, saying that: ‘It's regrettable and unhelpful that Random House
has chosen to try to intimidate authors and agents over these old book
contracts. With such a weak legal hand, it would be well advised to stick to its
strength—the advantages that its marketing muscle can provide owners of e-book
rights. It should also start offering a fair royalty for those rights.’
The royalty rate to be paid on e-books is also a hot topic for debate, with
Random House and other publishers saying it should be 25%, while others are
pushing for 50% and the UK Society of Authors has said it should be as much as
75%.
These aren’t the only controversies relating to e-books though. Amazon
appears to be trying to use its near-monopoly position with the Kindle to force
low prices. It has made $9.95 standard and has just been experimenting with
$7.95 for certain major authors. But these low price points threaten not only
the book trade but the existing structure of publishing, because if the e-book
comes out at the same time as the hardback but at a much lower price then it
threatens both the sales of the higher-priced hardback edition and also the
paperback which would normally follow later.
As the year ends it looks like an annus horribilis for publishers,
with worse perhaps to follow in the New Year.
14 December 2009
Is this a revival of the short story?
Is it possible that the short story is at last getting a new lease of
life? The form, long beloved of writers, seems to be reaching new audiences
through the Internet and benefiting from new opportunities in the form of
prizes.
There used to be a good market for short stories in a wide range of
magazines, which provided continuous demand, but this is no longer the case and
there are very few remaining magazine outlets. Even the women’s magazines, for
long a bastion of short stories, hardly publish them now, as they’ve been
abandoned in favour of true-life stories, mostly written by journalists.
The short story remains, but it’s a truism of publishing that short
stories don’t sell and you have to be an emerging talent of major proportions to
get your first book published if it is a short story collection. Ian
McEwan’s first book, First Love, Last Rites, was the exception that
proved the rule. Even later in an established career, publishers groan at the
thought of a short story collection, even from big authors such as Maeve Binchy.
Readers mostly don’t like them either, for the simple reason that they prefer
a full-length novel in which they can get to know the characters, immerse
themselves in the plot and generally lose themselves. Escapism is a major reason
why readers go for fiction.
So, what’s been happening? First there was Story, the campaign for the
short story: ‘We believe that the short story is one of the most exciting and
important literary forms, that can and should reach the widest possible
readership. We believe that the short story matters,’ says its website.
The latest news is that Kate Clanchy has emerged ahead of a strong shortlist
to win the £15,000 ($24,399)
BBC National Short Story Award. Best known as a poet, Clanchy received
the award for The Not-Dead and The Saved, about a mother and her
terminally ill son. It is only her third attempt at the genre. Di Speirs, judge
and editor of readings, BBC Radio 4, said: ‘Judging this award on behalf of
the BBC since its inception, I have been keenly aware of the growing strength of
entries - not just in volume but in range and depth and poise. Year on year,
acclaimed writers from other disciplines have been drawn to try their hand at it
and I am delighted to see this broader appeal paying such dividends now.’
It’s very good to see public recognition of the short story form and the BBC
award will certainly encourage writers and also give readers a good opportunity
to encounter some really good short stories on the BBC website (although this is
only sadly through podcasts, rather than in written form).
Which is of course the other great reason why short stories are back in
the news – their short length makes them perfect for the Internet. Something as
short as a story can be read on screen without discomfort and this means that
writers have a whole new online market for short fiction.
This week Amazon announced that it will sell two stories, one by Christopher
Buckley and the other by Edna O’Brien, exclusively through its Kindle store. The
stories have been selected and edited by the staff at The Atlantic, the
venerable magazine that once published short fiction in its print pages monthly.
Priced at $3.99 (£2.50) each, the stories are only available on the Kindle,
Amazon’s electronic reader, and will not appear in the print version of the
magazine.
The Atlantic’s editors plan to offer about two Kindle stories every
month. The magazine now only has an annual fiction issue and stopped publishing
monthly fiction in 2005, so it is interesting to see its traditional role being
revived in this way.
Story
Including a number
of articles
Podcasts of this
year’s shortlist
7 December 2009
No country for old typewriters
It didn’t seem a slow news week, but the amount of coverage which has been
given to the sale of Cormac McCarthy’s typewriter in the last few days has been
truly astonishing. The American writer bought the machine, an Olivetti
Lettera 31, from a pawnshop for $50 (£30) in 1963. Since then he has used it to
type 12 novels (plus three as-yet unpublished ones), two plays, several
screenplays and untold numbers of letters (no email here), a total of some 5
million words over 50 years.
In the meantime the rest of us, writers included, have migrated, first to the
electric typewriter and then to the computer, changing the act of writing
radically. No longer is it a matter of messy corrections, Tippex and re-typing.
Modern writers don’t have to get it right first time but can edit and rewrite on
screen, something which has become second nature to us all. The mind boggles
to think of McCarthy producing his novels and getting them ‘right first time’,
but, who knows, maybe those writers of the typewriter generation were just dab
hands at re-typing, and very fast at doing it to boot.
‘When I grasped that some of the most complex, almost otherworldly fiction
of the postwar era was composed on such a simple, functional, frail-looking
machine, it conferred a sort of talismanic quality to Cormac's typewriter,’
said Glenn Horowitz, a rare-book dealer who arranged the auction on McCarthy's
behalf. ‘It's as if Mount Rushmore was carved with a Swiss Army knife.’
The typewriter was expected to sell for $20,000 (£13,200) but eventually,
because of all the publicity the auction had received, it went for $254,500
(£154,475), much to everyone’s surprise. McCarthy has spent most of his
writing life in extreme poverty, but in recent years his Pulitzer Prize, the
success of his books starting with All the Pretty Horses, and the four
Oscars award-winning film of No Country for Old Men have all made him
into a celebrity whose typewriter is news.
As The Times said last week: ‘Until the publication of All the
Pretty Horses in 1992, Cormac McCarthy was considered the best unknown
novelist in America. None of his previous novels, which included Suttree
(1979) and Blood Meridian (1985), had sold more than 2,500 copies in hard
cover. There was good reason for his obscurity: McCarthy’s books were, and
are, implacably grim and violent. They are also stylistically challenging, often
plotless, lacking traditional punctuation and arcane in their vocabulary.’
So, is McCarthy seizing the opportunity to discover the marvels of word
processing on a computer? He is not. A friend has already found him another
portable Olivetti. This time it cost him only $11.
30 November 2009
Borders UK goes into administration
The troubled British book chain Borders went into administration last
week. The chain, which had been the subject of a management buyout in July,
proved unable to trade its way through the recession. It was already in the
process of closing down its Book Etc stores when the end came.
A loss of £10.3m ($17m) in 2007 was followed by a loss of £13.6m ($22.45m)
in 2008 and eventually the firm ended up with problems getting credit insurance.
The big publishers stopped supplying the chain and efforts to sell at least some
of the shops to W H Smith proved unsuccessful, although it may be a different
picture if the high street giant can now cherry-pick the stores it wants at a
bargain price from the administrator.
Borders is thought to be holding £10-15m ($16.5m-$24.7m) of stock and it is
currently continuing to trade, although it can only get new stock through
wholesalers. The future of its 45 stores and 1,150 staff seems uncertain at
best.
For publishers, the timing could not be worse, as the trade goes into the
key final few weeks of Christmas trading. Last year the collapse of
Woolworths in the same period wreaked havoc with book supply with the loss of
the Woolworths stores and suspension of supply from linked company, the
wholesaler Bertrams. It was only because of persistent and cool work by the
Publishers’ Association that Bertrams survived. This year it looks as if there
will be no such happy outcome.
Neill Denny, editor-in-chief of the Bookseller, said: ‘Borders'
essential problem has always been trying to make a big box US retail format work
here, where on average retail square footage costs about twice as much. They
expanded fast in the late 1990s and the early part of this decade and may well
have overpaid for leases. It may be that in a tightening book market, there just
isn't room for three national chains, particularly when you consider the
continuing growth of the supermarkets and the web.’
It is generally thought that the accelerating percentage of sales through
the web has been the main factor in Borders’ demise, but the company’s severe
cash flow problems became worse as sales fell.
Verdict retail analyst Neil Saunders says: ‘The books industry is still a
very difficult market to trade in. Margins are very thin in books, and a lot of
people are increasingly focused on price. But there's still a place for the
bookshop on the High Street because people do like to browse, and a lots of
people go into bookstores for reading inspiration - that wasn't really the case
with the music industry, and it's a key differential.’
He added: ‘Local bookshops with extensive back catalogues and specialist
areas are carving out a niche, and they can still do well.’ And perhaps this is
the encouraging message we should take from Borders’ collapse. Many will miss
Borders’ breezy superstores, with a mix of music and magazines but also a
surprising amount of book stock, which seemed to offer something different and
attract a younger market. But for all that it’s a sad day when 45 bookshops
seem likely to be lost and there is a further narrowing of competition in book
retail on the high street.
23 November 2009
So what's the Google Settlement all about?
You may be thoroughly bored with the Google Settlement (see last week’s
News Review) but it has a significant impact on authors’
rights so it’s worth making the effort to understand what it’s all about.
Last week’s agreement has met with very different responses. Paul Aiken,
Executive Director of the Authors’ Guild in the States says that:
‘The Google Settlement will not give the internet giant a significant hold
over the publishing industry, because it has zero market share in books right
now, and we don’t see that them being able to offer online versions of out of
print books will change that in any way.’ Aiken said it would increase
online competition: ‘We think it’s a good thing for authors, publishers and
readers – and we think their opposition is more about, at least in Amazon's
case, protecting their position as the dominant player online.’
The UK Publishers Association also backs the Settlement, although the
Booksellers’ Association doesn’t. PA Chief Executive Simon Juden said that it
was ‘a difficult and controversial matter with plenty of devil in the detail. As
in any negotiation, no side has achieved everything it wanted and there are
certainly aspects of the new Settlement that would bear improvement. The deal
originated from Google taking actions that we think broke the rules (digitising
10 million "orphan" and out of print works without the rights-holders’
permission). I don’t think anyone feels comfortable about that.’
The Open Book Alliance, of which Amazon is a member, is still expected to
lodge a formal appeal against the revised settlement. A more negative view has
been expressed by Gary Reback, its Co-chair: ‘The proposed changes fail to
address this deal’s fundamental flaws. Despite Google’s effort to spin this
deal, it does nothing to promote competition nor does it reform Google’s
exclusive access and monopoly hold on this digital database of books’.
So where do things stand? In withdrawing its attempt to make the
Settlement effective internationally, Google has dismantled much of the
opposition, particularly from Europe. Now books published only in the US, UK,
Canada and Australia will be part of Google Books. The beneficiaries are the
authors and publishers, known as the ‘rights-holders’ of out-of-print and
‘orphan’ books. Google defines a book that is ‘not commercially available’ as
being out of print, ie, if you can’t buy it online, or if it’s not stocked in
traditional booksellers. An orphan work is an out-of-print work where normal
copyright laws apply, but whose rights owner is unknown.
Authors stand to gain at least $60 (£36), if their book has been scanned, is
out of print and they choose not to opt out of the system. After that, they will
get revenues from any sales of their works on Google Books. These are books
which were previously not generating any revenue. About two thirds of proceeds
will go to copyright owners, while Google will receive about a third.
Unless, you say otherwise, you’re presumed to have opted into the project.
With that comes the loss of rights. You can’t sue Google for copyright
infringement, and many lawyers think that that makes the deal questionable, if
not illegal. Also, it gives Google extraordinary power. From having zero
market share in publishing, suddenly they stock ten million books, seven million
of which you’re not likely to find anywhere else. Which makes you realise why
Amazon in particular, with its near- monopoly of the online book business, is
not at all comfortable with the deal.
16 November 2009
Google Settlement agreed
The New Google Settlement (see News Review 7 September)
looks like a reasonable resolution of a thorny set of problems. Bowing to
pressure from foreign governments and the US Department of Justice, the
revised Settlement presented to the district Court in New York shortly before
midnight on Friday limits the scope of the scheme to works registered with the
US Copyright Office and books published in the UK, Canada and Australia.
The named plaintiffs have been expanded to include authors and publishers
from those countries, and British, Australian and Canadian right-holders will
gain representation on the Book Rights Registry board which will be set up.
The plaintiffs say that ‘after hearing feedback from foreign rightsholders,
[they] decided to narrow the class to include countries with a common legal
heritage and similar book industry practices’.
Richard Sarnoff of Bertelsmann, speaking for the Association of American
Publishers, said that: ‘The settlement is not about setting up the digital
future of publishing; it's about not leaving old books behind’.
The eventual form of the Settlement means that, as expressed by Paul Aiken,
Executive Director of the Authors’ Guild: ‘95% per cent of foreign languages
works are out’ of the agreement, meaning ‘the lion's share of the potential
unclaimed works are now out of the settlement’.
Google Books engineering director Dan Clancy noted in the company's blog:
‘We're disappointed that we won't be able to provide access to as many books
from as many countries through the settlement as a result of our modifications,
but we look forward to continuing to work with rightsholders from around the
world to fulfill our longstanding mission of increasing access to all the
world's books’.
The now much smaller body of orphan works will have an independent,
court-approved fiduciary, who will represent rightsholders of unclaimed books
and the Book Rights Registry is also now specifically required to actually
‘search for rightsholders who have not yet come forward’.
Google will allow third parties to sell access to all Settlement works,
although the terms for the retailer are still not clear. The potential new
revenue models to be negotiated at a later date have been narrowed in scope in
the new agreement, limited to print on demand, file download and consumer
subscriptions.
The new settlement also accommodates rightsholders who want to make their books
available for free under Creative Commons or other licenses. Finally, as
expected, the noxious ‘most favored nation’ clause that limited the Registry's
licensing of unclaimed works has been removed, and the Registry ‘is free to
license to other parties without ever extending the same terms to Google’.
It remains to be seen what effect all this will have on authors’ control of
their work, but the final Settlement agreed appears to have dealt with many of
the anxieties of the parties involved. Google can proceed but under tighter
controls than were originally proposed.
Google blog
9 November 2009
The tragic saga of a bestselling author
Stieg Larsson has been continually in the news ever since publication of
his first book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The third
part of the Milennium trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, has
recently been published in the UK and the US.
It has a unique place in both countries, for in both of them it is
extremely rare for a translated novel to have any kind of major success.
Larsson has also been very successful across Europe and last month his books
were high in the bestseller lists in France, Germany, Italy and Denmark. An
amazing one in three Swedes has read him and 20 million of his books have
already been sold across Europe alone.
What is unique about these books is the author’s clear moral purpose and
the immensely complicated plots. Larsson, very unusually for a male writer,
is extremely concerned about misogyny and male violence directed at women. His
characters, Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander, are not off any stock shelf
and, moral purpose or not, the books are genuinely page-turning.
It’s very sad that Larsson’s novelist career had hardly begun before it
was over, when the author was struck down by a sudden heart attack at the age of
50 after
climbing seven flights of stairs. The irony is not just that he did not live
to see the fantastic success of his books or to have a long career as a
bestselling writer. His unexpected death has also meant that his girlfriend,
54 year-old architectural historian Eva Gabrielsson, has not inherited any
rights to the books, even though she helped research them. The couple had
not married, although they had lived together for over 30 years and Larsson did
not make a will in her favour.
Gabrielsson says she and Larsson never married because he had believed his
anti-fascist work could have put her at risk if there was a paper trail linking
them legally or financially, but that he would have been dismayed to see anyone
other than her in control of the estate. 'It would have been beyond Stieg's
worst nightmares to know that someone other than me was handling the rights to
his books and to know that the money we planned to invest is gone' she has
said.
Stieg Larsson’s father and brother have inherited the whole estate and don’t
intend to share it with Eva Gabrielson, although they have recently offered her
£1.75m ($2.93m) to relinquish all rights . There are rumours that there are 200
words of a new novel and sketched-out ideas for six more in Larsson’s laptop,
which Gabrielson isn’t about to hand over anytime soon. But could they be
completed by someone else? It’s difficult to see how anyone could step fully
into Larsson’s shoes but for his fans it’s an intriguing thought.
In the meantime the current situation seems like an episode out of one of
Larsson’s own books, as her father and brother seek to sweep aside the woman who
has been legally disinherited, but who morally surely seems entitled to her
share, and to the all-important control of Larsson's work.
2 November 2009
Too much, too fast
These are nervous times in the book world. Too much seems to be happening
too fast and no-one is sure what it means or where we’re all going to end up.
Having said that, it’s worth remembering that readers want the same things
out of books whether they get those books in traditional print form or through
an e-reader, mobile phone or some other device yet to be invented. Those two
things are information and stories, and we should think separately about these
two very different areas of publishing.
Broadly speaking, information publishing, which encompasses non-fiction trade
(or general) publishing as well as enormous areas such as specialist,
professional, academic and educational publishing, can benefit from delivering
information online. The devastation of the encyclopedia and reference business
in print form shows an extreme form of this, even though many of us will
continue to reach for our print dictionary for many years to come.
But for fiction and narrative non-fiction, or ‘reading’ books, the story
is the point, and that will continue to be delivered in print form because there
are many book-buyers who like to access their books in that way and will
continue to do so. However the figures for e-book sales for The Lost
Symbol in the US are truly amazing - it has been outselling the hardback -
and more readers may be ready to switch to e-books more rapidly than anyone
might have forecast a year or two back.
So people in the book world have to think through what this means for books
in print form. A figure just released last week shows that only 4% of British
readers have so far read an e-book, but Americans are two years ahead on
this and many of them seem happy to adopt the new e-readers. This shows that
there is potentially a very much bigger market for e-books than many observers
had expected.
At the same time it’s clear that the second great change in the process of
buying and reading books is accelerating. Amazon showed a growth of net
income in the third quarter of 68%, as compared to last year, with a 28%
increase in net sales. The latter increased by 33% in the international division
during the same period. Of course the Internet giant is now successfully selling
many items other than books, largely because it offers both range and
convenience (the same things which attract book buyers), so books make up just a
part of these figures. They do show the trend towards online retail and the
price comparison that makes possible.
And at this moment a price war has broken out in the States and Wallmart.com
is experimenting with the use of books as loss-leaders, in exactly the same way
as UK supermarkets have done, with the very same book, The Lost Symbol.
So the future looks as if it will involve far greater sales of e-books and
even more online and supermarket sales than has been the case in the past - both
trends which will continue to have a massive impact on the whole book business.
26 October 2009
UK versus US readers
A recent study from Book Marketing Limited, which runs the Books &
Consumers survey, and Bowker, which runs the US equivalent, PubTrack, has
highlighted some interesting differences between British and American readers.
A higher percentage of the British than of the US population bought books
in 2008. Fifty-seven per cent of British consumers bought one or more books
last year, whereas only 50% of Americans did.
Romance and mystery (or crime) fiction was a more important part of the US
fiction market (57%, by comparison with 31% in Britain). This shows that
Americans are reading more genre fiction than British readers.
Men accounted for only 29% of the US fiction market, a surprisingly low
figure, but 40% of the British fiction market. This is partly because men
are generally reckoned not to buy romance, which is almost totally a female
market, and accounts for big sales in the US, but also probably indicates that
more American women buy mysteries. It also seems to suggest that male American
readers are more focused on non-fiction than their UK counterparts.
Kelly Gallagher, Vice President of Publisher Services for Bowker, pointed
out: ‘In addition to the noteworthy differences, there are also interesting
similarities, such as the data indicating that both markets are reliant on older
buyers, with adults over the age of 42 accounting for two-thirds of all book
purchases in both the US and Great Britain.’
There are however big differences in the bookselling environment.
Price discounting has been nothing like as ferocious in the US as in the UK,
where recent loss-leading sales of the latest Dan Brown book by some
supermarkets and Internet booksellers have received much adverse comment. There
is however currently a price war developing between Amazon.com and Wallmart.com.
The Internet is the primary channel for book sales in the US, whereas
retail bookshop chains are still ahead in Britain. This may however be just a
matter of timing, as Internet sales are still increasing rapidly as a proportion
of all book sales in the UK. This may not happen though, as the UK,
being a small, relatively densely populated country, does provide book buyers
with easier access to bookselling outlets of one kind or another.
It’s good to be able to report that on both sides of the Atlantic
independent booksellers seem to be standing their ground. It’s been tough
for them during the recession and many have closed, but it is heartening to see
new shops opening up. The survivors have managed to keep going by cultivating a
loyal customer base, with events in the stores, a focus on local books, cafes
and often strong additional business through the internet and local schools or
colleges.
One other significant difference in the market is that books are much
hotter news in the UK than they are in the US, with considerable feature space
devoted to them in the press, on radio and TV. The recent BBC Poetry Season,
which caused a spike in poetry sales, would be unthinkable in the States. This
strong media focus has a significant impact on book sales – long may it last!
19 October 2009
A sober Frankfurt
No-one expected Frankfurt to be a ball this year. Everyone knew that the
big parties were cancelled – no more trying to crash the big Bertelsmann
extravaganza and none of the other opulent parties of old. It’s still a shock to
find that it was so very subdued.
The American contingent was considerably slimmed down. Neither Random House
nor Simon & Schuster sent any editors, a sign of belt-tightening which may have
sent an even starker message of cut-backs than was really intended. Some British
houses cut back on editors too, with the general effect that there were
plenty of people selling rights, including a great many subsidiary rights people
and agents, but not many people to sell to.
But perhaps this is to have an exaggeratedly Anglo-Saxon view of the
publishing world. For the many publishing people from countries other than
the US and the UK, business went on much as usual. It’s always been
difficult to sell books from these countries to the Brits and Americans because
English language publishers are not much interested in what is going on
elsewhere. There’s no shortage of books being written in English and these don't
carry the high cost of translation.
And it was these cutbacks which were causing the change. Publishers didn’t
want their editors to buy books, so why send them to Frankfurt? Deals could
be concluded by email before and after the Fair and no publishing management
wanted to get into the kind of bidding war over ‘the book of the Fair’ which
used to characterise Frankfurt in the old days. Having trimmed their lists
and spread out the books they have under contract into future years, publishers
want to sit tight, contain costs and wait out the recession.
Much depends on Christmas, that annual orgy of book-buying which drives a
large proportion of sales in the West. Last Christmas was devastated in the
UK by the fallout from Woolworths closing-down, and in the US there has been a
steeper decline in book purchasing. But a good Christmas, in which gift
purchasers turned back to books as good but not-too-expensive gifts, could make
a big difference. Many consumers do feel that the end of the recession is in
sight, but that they’d still better be careful, so books could do well as
relatively inexpensive gifts.
But even when the book business comes out of this recession it’s still
going to be a different world. Publishers will rebuild their lists cautiously,
with an emphasis on the tried and tested, and what is already bestselling.
Unpublished authors will continue to think hard about self-publishing. And
digitisation and the growth in e-books may yet change the market so radically
that we are really talking about a whole new ball-game.
11 October 2009
The Kindle goes global
This was the week when, in the middle of an unsurprising Booker and an
unremarkable Nobel Prize for Literature, Amazon launched its much-heralded
Kindle 2 international edition.
Clearly the Internet giant has found it impossible to knot together wireless
availability in the territories where it runs Internet bookshops and has opted
instead – for the moment anyway - for an international version supplied by A T &
T. It is two years since the device was launched in the US and during that
time the e-reader scene has changed hugely, so Amazon must have begun to worry
that it would lose its first mover advantage.
The Kindle 2 will be available from 19 October in 100 countries at a cost
of $279. The 200,000 e-books available for purchase directly from Amazon.com’s
Kindle Store using the wireless connection will be supplied from the States at
an extra cost of $1.99 each. Most publishers have agreed to this, with
Random House a slightly surprising holdout, so the e-books will be supplied
according to existing territorial rights agreements.
Amazon said a safeguard has been put in place to respect territorial rights:
‘When a customer first buys Kindle content, they identify their region or
country. In order to simplify their browsing experience, we then display the
appropriate catalogue for the customer. When they travel, the content available
to a customer is determined by their home country, not by the country they are
travelling in.’
The Amazon.com website says: ‘New York Times® Best Sellers and
New Releases are $11.99 to $13.99 (prices include VAT), unless marked otherwise.
You'll also find many books for less - over 70,000 titles are priced under
$5.99.’ Readers can use the wireless connection to buy from the Kindle
Store, download books in less than 60 seconds, automatically receive newspaper
and magazine subscriptions, and receive personal documents.
Jeff Bezos now claims that for books available in both print and ebook
form, Kindle comprises 48 percent of Amazon's sale on average, an astonishing
figure which indicates that the demand for e-books has grown very much faster in
the US than anyone other than the biggest e-book enthusiasts might have
foretold.
So what is the competition for the Kindle 2? The Sony Reader is
clearly currently the strongest and the most established in a number of markets,
including the UK. Consumers who opt for one of its devices will be able to
buy e-books from anywhere they like. The iRex is one of a number of other
contenders but there’s also a rumoured launch from Apple of a new
revolutionary device which might change the whole scene.
The Kindle’s whole business model is predicated on what is known as a "walled
garden"; to buy e-books from its website, you need a Kindle and to read
e-books on the Kindle, you need to buy them from its site. But Sony, which
will next year bring out an updated version of its own e-reader, is doing away
with its proprietary model and adopting the more common ePub format.
Consumers who opt for one of its devices will be able to buy e-books from
anywhere they like.
Publishers prefer the ePub option, because it means they just have to convert
books into one universal electronic format, instead of kowtowing to the demands
of individual booksellers. It also means that sales are likely to be higher,
while giving publishers more control over pricing. Most important of all, it
enables them to avoid being caught up in the monopolistic growth of Amazon,
which has already shown repeatedly that it is ready to flex its muscles when
publishers don’t toe the line.
For everyone in the book business, there’s a lot riding on the new Kindle.
Kindle 2
4 October 2009
It's Frankfurt time again
The annual Frankfurt Book Fair starts on 14 October and already publishers
from around the globe are gearing up for the many meetings, arranged weeks ago,
which they will be packing in with publishers from all over the world.
At the moment the Fair looks as if it will shrink again this year. Less
than 7,000 exhibitors have signed up, according to preliminary figures from
the organisers, which could mark a decline for the second year in a row. Figures
from 10 September show 6,936 exhibitors have booked stand space at the fair.
Last year's event saw numbers drop to 7,373 from 7,448 in 2007. However, Bridget
Shine, executive director of the UK’s Independent Publishers’ Guild, said it
would have more than 40 exhibitors on its stand, which was more than in previous
years.
Exhibitors are trying to get better value out of the Fair by sending less
people and having them stay for a shorter time. American publishers are widely
expected to be even thinner on the ground than last year, as the recession has
bitten hard in the US. But for many publishers from all over the world, large
and small, Frankfurt is an essential event in the publishing calendar. Where
else will they get the chance to meet, present their lists and sell both rights
and books?
There’s already the usual talk about what will be ‘the book’ of the Fair. In
spite of the fact that book rights are sold throughout the year, using email for
cheap and fast communication, this does not take away from the fact that it pays
to have something ‘noisy’ to sell at the Fair.
In the meantime the ambitious, relatively new director of the Fair,
Juergen Boos, is doing everything to make sure that Frankfurt remains the
premier gathering for the world’s book trade. China has been made the guest
of honour for this year and prior to the Fair there will be a two-day symposium
addressing the subject of China; the Tools of Change conference, which has
looked at digital opportunities and threats to the industry, has already taken
place in New York; and this year’s International Rights Directors’ meeting will
focus on the topic of making money out of digital.
But Boos is has also been working on making the Frankfurt Book Fair an
international brand and an organisation in its own right: ‘We want to
establish our presence at the global level while remaining adapted to regional
conditions.’ There is the Cape Town Book Fair, launched three years ago with
the Publishers’ Association of South Africa, and also the partnership with the
Abu Dhabi Book Fair, which it is hoped will open up the potentially lucrative
Arab market to publishers from all over the world.
Still, the important thing is to meet, talk and get on with doing
business. Jamie Camplin, MD of Thames & Hudson said: ‘The great challenge
of this year's Frankfurt is to get the book trade off knee-jerk, navel-gazing
responses to the recession.’
Inside Publishing on
the
Frankfurt Book Fair
International Book Fairs 2009
Back to Top
28 September 2009
Authors' advances slashed
Authors’ advances are being cut radically as a result of the recession.
Together with the cancelling of contracts because a delivered manuscript is
‘not good enough’ or is late, this is all part of publishers’ attempts to cut
their costs. The cutting of publishing lists to reduce investment in books
has been the main feature of the recession to date, so far as far as authors are
concerned, with a consequent devastation of the midlist. New authors are
experiencing greater difficulty than ever before in getting their books taken on
by a publisher. Now evidence is emerging that even big authors are having their
advances cut.
Author Iain Banks has spoken publicly about taking a pay cut, telling the
Guardian: ‘I'm getting less money for my next
book contract. But I've heard of writers having their advances cut by 80%, and
others getting nothing.’ Agent Mic Cheetham, who represents Banks,
commented: ‘The climate has changed. I think it's called "a haircut" - a little
trim. You have to look to keep the haircut to an absolute minimum.’
The new chair of the Society of Authors (SoA), Tom Holland, told the
Bookseller this week: ‘The Society of Authors is to explore options for
urgent collective action against the cuts in author advances.’ He said authors
were ‘becoming the whipping boys for the revolution going on in publishing’ and
that the recession was being used ‘as an excuse’ by publishers to cut back on
advances.
‘The increasingly monopolistic Amazon and the supermarkets are kicking the
high street chains who are kicking the publishers who are kicking authors.
The recession is being used as an excuse but the real reason for cutting
advances is structural changes [in the industry]. We want to make sure that we
are not at the bottom of the food chain.’
The acting president of the Association of Authors' Agents, Anthony Goff,
confirmed that advances were being cut by as much as 70%.’For big brand
authors their position is stronger than ever,’ he said. ‘Elsewhere the
reductions range from 5% to 70% - if it is much below 70% they are just dropping
the authors. Publishers are cutting lists and there is less competition out
there in the market, so there is a natural economics going on.’ Goff said
the question remained as to whether this shift was a "blip" in the market caused
by recession, or a permanent shift.
Holland said he would be canvassing ‘a broad range of opinion’ as to what
action SoA could take, and that time was of the essence. ‘Such is the pace of
change that any opportunity for action will be lost within two years,’ he said.
‘The SoA will never be a mass block trade union, and trying to organise
authors is as easy as herding cats, but equally there is no point in having the
Society if it does not respond at a time of unprecedented change.’
Back to Top
21 September 2009
Has Dan Brown hastened the tipping-point?
Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol has dominated the press headlines this
week. The big numbers hog the airwaves, but there are plenty of other reasons
why this story makes compelling reading.
The Lost Symbol had a worldwide first print run of 6.5 million copies. In
the UK the one million didn’t look like enough, and the book is already
reprinting. The author’s track record is truly astounding, with The Da Vinci
Code having sold more than 81 million copies worldwide. Not only was it the
UK’s biggest-selling paperback novel of all time, but Brown’s backlist titles
dominated the top spots in the same list, with Angels and Demons 2nd,
Deception Point 3rd and Digital Fortress 4th
in line. The US publishers announced that the new book had broken one-day sales
records, selling more than a million copies in the first day in the US, UK and
Canada.
Bestselling children’s author Philip Pulllman, who has sold 15 million of his
own books, says that his rival author populates his books with ‘completely
flat and two-dimensional’ characters. ‘His basic ignorance about the way people
behave is astonishing, talking in utterly implausible ways to one another’,
but Brown does know how to tell a story in a way that ‘makes people want to
keep turning pages’. This has to be the secret of his immense popularity
The Lost Symbol has also been very heavily discounted, so it seems like
most big retailers are not making any money out of it. Amazon brought their
price in the UK down from £18.99 to £4.99 to undercut the competition. In
the US the company is selling at a massive 44% off the cover price.
Writing in the Independent, D J Taylor said: ‘Hardly anyone in the
British book trade, apart from Dan Brown, his agent and his publisher, will make
any money out of The Lost Symbol. The big chains are using it as a
loss-leader to coax in trade. Many independent booksellers will find themselves
in the absurd position of buying their copies not from the wholesaler with whom
they usually deal but the Asda down the road... At a rough calculation, several
million pounds that could have been used to irrigate an industry struggling to
emerge from recession is simply being thrown away in defiance of fiscal logic.
Here, after all, is a product that hundreds and thousands of people want to buy.
Why not make them pay a proper price for it?’
Agent Jonny Geller commented: ‘If the most popular book on earth is a
fiver, what does it tell the punter? Books are worthless. Retailers are just
throwing away their industry.’
There’s more bad news though. Pirated copies found their way onto the
Internet within one day of the book being published, and could be found on The
Pirate Bay and Scrib.com. On these versions not even the author will make a
penny.
Amazon has also announced that the Kindle e-book version has been outselling
the hardback edition in the US. Commentators were not slow to seize on this,
with one blogger writing: ‘The electronic book age is really about to burst
upon us.’
So, it this Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘tipping-point’? Well, it just might be.
Back to Top
14 September 2009
Strong Booker shortlist - does Wolf Hall lead the pack?
So why is it that the Man Booker Prize manages to generate so much
interest across the world? Entries are limited to novels written in English and
American writers’ work is excluded, but in spite of all this the Prize seems to
generate considerable interest year after year.
It’s by no means the most valuable literary prize to be announced during the
year, although offering £50,000 to the winner. Others, such as the Nobel
Prize for Literature, offer both more money and more kudos, as well as being
infinitely more international.
Clever marketing and publicity must be part of the story, but cannot be the
only factor. Having said that, the publicity is very good and it’s a clever
wheeze to annex any news relating to previous winners and shortlisted - and even
longlisted - writers, so that there is a constant flow of news available on
the Prize’s website.
The Booker is now of course embedded into the literary year, with a lot
riding on being shortlisted and even more, of course, on winning. In 2009
there were 312 submissions from publishers. Ion Trewin, Literary Director of the
Prize, said: ‘This year, since the
longlist was announced, the total extra sales generated by the 13 titles was
over 50,000. That’s according to Nielsen BookScan figures rather than what
publishers say they’ve sold.’
A very considerable uplift in sales can confidently be expected for the
winner and often for the shortlisted titles as well, as well as those which get
to the longlist but fail to be shortlisted. The publicity for the winner
makes a significant difference to his or her writing career, often, but not
always, lifting them into the literary stratosphere and transforming their
subsequent titles into significant sellers. Stanley Middleton continued in
obscurity after his win, whereas Yann Martel has become an international
megaseller.
Be that as it may, what has made the Booker so influential is a steady
diet of controversy. This started with John Berger’s win in 1972, which was
followed by an attack in his acceptance speech on Booker McConnell, then the
sponsors of the Prize, for the way they had garnered much of their wealth in the
Caribbean, and his decision to give the money to the Black Panthers.
Graham Swift, 1996 winner, says: ’Prizes don't make
writers and writers don't write to win prizes, but in the near-glut of literary
awards now on offer, the Booker remains special. It's the one which, if we're
completely honest, we most covet.’
This year’s shortlist was interesting because the Chair of the Judges,
broadcaster James Naughtie said: ‘There were some terrible novels in the 132
submissions this year. There were also some good novels which didn’t quite have
what it took to make the leap onto the shortlist.’ But, he added: ‘This is one
of the best shortlists in the last couple of decades’.
This year’s controversy so far is the extraordinary odds being offered by
bookmakers William Hill for Hilary Mantel's Henry VIII-themed Wolf Hall,
which has been installed as the first ever odds-on favourite to win the literary
award. Graham Sharpe of William Hill said: 'Since it appeared on the
long-list, 95% of the Booker bets we have taken have been on Wolf Hall,
originally offered at 8/1 - and which now seems certain to be the worst ever
result for bookies if it goes on to win, costing us well into six figures. So I
have made it the hottest favourite ever' - a 4/5 favourite (win £4 for
every £5 staked).’
So, what can we read into this if Wolf Hall does win?
Man Booker Prize website
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7 September 2009
Google goes for broke
After a slow start, objectors have finally been getting their arguments
against Google’s plans in before the closing date of last Friday, 4 September.
It’s ended up being a powerful coalition of authors’ organisations,
lawyers and now some governments, all of which are opposing Google’s plan to
digitise vast numbers of titles unless authors object individually.
For those of you who have lost the plot – and no wonder, it’s extremely
complicated and in some ways quite incredible – here’s where we’re at. The
Google Book Search Settlement is an attempt by Google to set itself up so that
it can digitise vast numbers of books and in due course sell the digitised
versions. Authors and other rights-holders would have to object and withdraw
their books individually if those titles are to be excluded.
At first it looked as it the reaction was rather muted, prompting the fear
that Google might even get away with what seems to many just a terrifically
audacious rights grab which would put the company into a dominant position
globally as regards book material. But now Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo are
planning to join a coalition of non-profit groups, individuals and library
associations, tentatively called the Open Book Alliance, to oppose the
Settlement. Scott Gant, a US antitrust lawyer who is an author, filed a 50-page
objection claiming that the proposed deal is an illegal expansion of
class-action law.
The Alliance plans to make a case that the arrangement is anti-competitive.
Their lawyer, Gary L Reback, said: ‘This deal has enormous, far-reaching
anti-competitive consequences that people are just beginning to wake up to.’
It’s claimed that it would vest Google with significant market power which it
could not acquire without the Settlement and that it raises serious antitrust
issues that must be considered as part of the Court’s review of the Proposed
Settlement.
Gant’s most damaging argument, however, is that the settlement fails to
safeguard the due process rights of absent class members as required by law—a
potentially fatal blow to the settlement, because if upheld by the court, it
would remove a critical foundation of the deal, under which Google would
essentially obtain a license to works without the specific consent of the
copyright holder. He will be involved as a class action member.
Publishers’ Weekly carried out a survey which showed general indifference
to the threat of the Google Settlement and concluded: ‘For us, the survey
highlights a fundamental question: for all the good and bad scenarios raised by
the deal, was it ever reasonable to think that such a revolutionary,
unprecedented pact, negotiated in secret over three years by people with loose
claims of representation, concerning a wide range of stakeholders, both foreign
and domestic, involving murky issues of copyright and the rapidly unfolding
digital future, could be pushed through as a class action settlement within a
period of months, in the teeth of a historic media industry transition?’
Objections have come from all over the world. A group representing
approximately 100 Japanese publishers objected earlier in the summer but this
week there was a wave of similarly-reasoned filings from a variety of publishers
and publishers' associations in other parts of the world: Sweden's Norstedts
(with potentially 20,000 out of print titles), Studentlitteratur, and Leopard;
Germany's Harrassowitz; and South African holding company Media24 (with
approximately 15,000 out of print titles) filed in opposition, as did the
Booksellers’ Association in the UK, and the publishers' associations in Germany,
Austria, France, Switzerland, and Sweden. US attorneys for the Federal Republic
of Germany filed a long challenge to the agreement, saying it ‘cannot adequately
and fairly represent’ German authors and publishers (neither of whom are allowed
to join the Authors Guild or the AAP in the States.
So it looks as if the Settlement will be thrown out and Google will have
to rein back on its plans. Or maybe not? The Chronicle of Higher
Education has an article by Geoffrey Nunberg of the University of California
at Berkeley. He demonstrates how Google’s poor use of metadata for its scanned
books will make work extremely difficult for scholars who need to search the
book database: ‘it’s so disappointing that the book search’s metadata are a
train wreck: a mishmash wrapped in a muddle wrapped in a mess’.
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