I get a 70% royalty for publishing my book

January 21st, 2010

Quite extraordinary, I thought when reading about how Amazon is reaching out to authors in a manner that completely disintermediates publishing companies. And publishers as we know them are not happy campers at the moment.

Arjan from Freedom Lab linked to this fascinating story about Amazon. For me in fact, it seems every single business model, built around controlled distribution by a toll road approach to content, knowledge and information that is done in a linear context is – done for.

Few will survive.

News presented as gospel is a thing of the past. Photo: Richard Ross

http://www.richardross.net/

The crux of the matter,

Amazon will pay authors and publishers a royalty of 70% of the list price of Kindle books, which is a far higher per-copy royalty than most authors receive on physical book sales (including the standard Kindle book royalties).

Recently I was down to some short strokes with a publisher, but the entire conversation handled over email – was – WHAT are YOU going to do for US? HOW are YOU going to market the book, how many books will YOU sell etc.? There was NO conversation about their editorial approach, etc.,

Why would I even bother continuing such a painful conversation? Communities Dominate Brands – the first book I published was marketed purely through blogging and speaking engagements. And yes Tomi we would have sold many more copies had we made a paperback version, and an audio version and a free version. Which would have = more other work$$$ not from publishing – but that is an aside.

The networked society and the economics of that society is underpinned by [1] velocity, [2] reach and [3] penetration of ideas that others find; attractive, compelling and useful. Good work, good ideas in the end – succeed. Although the Victor Meldrews of this world moan about the crap spewed forth by twitter and blogs and everything 2.0, one can’t find much room for maneuver with publishing that outputs a staggering amount of material per year in the hope that somewhere in all of that is, a blockbuster. Good work gets destroyed in the vain hope of commercial glory, and the entire reason why individuals exercise their minds and often, a great deal of time to; tell a story, deliver insight, value, knowledge, joy is forgotten by the over riding desire for Harry Potter scale profits.

Whereas the Amazon offer is about velocity, reach and the penetration/adoption of good ideas that plug into immediate and available translation technologies like say: Slavic, Portuguese, Russian, German, Japanese and Mandarin, and then we are off to the races. `but if your work is rubbish it fails then you have no-one but yourself to blame. Forests have not been felled needlesly for epic failures and we could save that precious carbon. But if you hit the WE REALLY LIKE IT BUTTON. Then its G&T’s all the way to the bank. This is how it works,

* The author or publisher-supplied list price must be between $2.99 and $9.99. This is designed to force a big difference between the physical-book price and the Kindle price, which traditional publishers are currently desperate to avoid (good luck).

* This list price must be at least 20 percent below the lowest physical list price for the physical book. Ditto.

* The title is made available for sale in all geographies for which the author or publisher has rights. This gets around the typical regional royalty deals, putting pressure on publishers worldwide.

* Books must be offered at or below price parity with competition, including physical book prices. This one is aimed at other e-readers, a slew of which have recently hit the market.

Kindle does scare me in many ways, because of the issues around data, and because of privacy but it also is a potential leveler of good vs poor and helps me make the decision that the £26.50 price tag that lingers next to the ISBN number that promises value is not worth the money.

This does not stop me with my limited edition book printed in cold metal and the mp3 version. What it does stop is others meddling with your creativity and your product.

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