An industry roiled


The changes that have been going on behind the scenes in the book publishing industry over the past few years are finally seeping out into the wider world.

This morning, there was a story in the news about Stephen Covey deciding to cut his own deal with Amazon for e-book sales, bypassing his traditional publisher. On Friday, the news media publicized a letter from Random House trying to claim it owns ebook rights for books published when ebooks didn't exist - an opinion at variance with what's come out of court proceedings that Random was party to.

It's easy to see why Covey - and a lot of other authors to follow - would go for a deal with Amazon cutting his traditional publisher out. Most publishers currently pay authors, at best, 25 percent of their proceeds on sales from ebooks. That would work out roughly to about 12.5 percent of what a customer pays - at best.

Deal with Amazon directly, and you can get 35 percent of the sale price. Deal with a different middleman (which is what Covey actually did, rather than what some stories lead you to believe), and you can get at least 25 percent of what they pay - twice the best deal an old-line publisher will pay.

Not good numbers, by the way, but that's what they are.

Publishers can argue that they add value to books in a number of ways; Random House tried to list a few, claiming to be investing "millions" in the Internet side of the business. But the dirty little secret is that, in many cases, publishers actually add little value to books, including the books at the very top of their lists. Take away their pipeline to the market - which they don't have with ebooks - and what does an author get?

A copy editor who adds ten errors for every one he fixes.

You can expect many authors to experiment with direct ebook deals. Whether they're the way of the future or not remains to be seen. But if you're a publisher, pissing authors off by claiming to own rights that they don't isn't the solution.

I deal with some great publishers, and some excellent editors. I have also dealt with the opposite.

I don't think the majority of authors want publishers to go out of business. But if publishing is going to save itself, it had better change much of what it does very soon.

Unfortunately, if it doesn't get this right, authors and readers, as well as the publishers themselves, will suffer.