The Joy and Frustration of Choices

One of the biggest changes the publishing industry has had to face in the last decade or two is the rise of a variety of formats in which a book can be published.  Since Amazon launched twenty years ago the e-book has come into its own.  That fact has been a book for self publishers and small presses, but it has also made publishing a bit more confusing.

The publishing business was already confusing when all books were paper.  A publisher would sell books to bookstores at a specified discount.  Each time a book was sold the publisher would pay the author a certain percentage of the price. The bookstore discount was pretty consistent at 40%, and cover prices for hard covers, trade paperbacks or mass market paperbacks were also pretty consistent.  For those reasons, author royalties were also pretty consistent across publishers. 

Of course this process continues. But now that author or publisher can also distribute this book for use on the iPhone, iPod Touch, Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader, Barnes & Noble Nook and probably some devices I haven’t thought of. Each requires a slightly different format and pays a different royalty.  If a publisher is handling these books, the company has to take those various royalties into account, which means that royalties to authors is not consistent from one publisher to the next. In the future a standard may well appear, but at this point both authors and publishers are still figuring out what seems fair and profitable.

AND there are variations on these variations. For example, if you give Amazon.com exclusive rights to your e-book you can get 70% royalties and even get paid when people just borrow your book. Otherwise your royalty will be just 30%, but you may actually make more if people with other e-readers buy your book.

Beyond that, each publisher (or self-publisher) sets the price for his or her book and there is no consistency there either.  I’ve seen e-books available for 99 cents and for 12.99.  One can assume the lower the price the more books sold but how do you establish what price will bring the publisher the most money?

If you choose to self-publish, good luck deciphering the new world of publishing.  If you find yourself trying to figure out  whether or not a publisher’s contract is fair to you, just now that the publisher on the other side of that contract thought long and hard on the decisions that, he hopes, will lead to a profit for him and for you… but that noboby has it all figured out yet.