Tag: self-publishing

Books, Music, Disruption and Distribution

Having watched this short film by The Economist on disruption in the music business, I find the parallels between the books and the music businesses uncanny.

Both industries have been traditionally controlled by the middlemen – labels in the case of music, and publishers in the case of books. Both sets of middlemen are oligopolies – there are three big music labels and four (?) major publishers. This is primarily a result of production costs – traditionally, professional recording equipment has been both expensive and hard to get. Similarly, typesetting and printing a book was expensive business.

However, both industries have been massively disrupted in the last couple of decades, primarily thanks to new distribution models – streaming in the case of music, and online vendors and e-books in the case of books. Simultaneously, the cost of production have also plummeted – I can get studio quality recording and mixing software on my Macbook Pro, and I already have a version of my book that looks good on the Kindle.

Yet, in both industries, the incumbents strongly believe that they continue to add value despite the disruption, and staunchly defend the value of the marketing and distribution they bring. In the above video, for example, a record studio executive talks about how established artistes may do well going “indie”, but new artistes require support in production, marketing and distribution.

If you see blogs and news articles on publishing and self-publishing, on the other hand, most of the talk is about how little value publishers themselves bring into the marketing and distribution process. While publishers continue to have a broad monopoly on the traditional distribution chain (bookstores, primarily), they have no particular competitive advantage in the new channels.

One of the successful indie artistes interviewed in the above video talks about how he was successful thanks to the brand and following he built up on social media, which ensured that his album had several takers as soon as it was released. It is again similar to advice that authors who want to self-publish get!

As someone who has completed a book manuscript and is looking for production and distribution options, I find the developments in the indie space (across products) rather interesting. Going by all this, maybe I should just give up on the “stamp of approval” I’m looking for from a traditional publisher, and go indie myself!

I leave you with a few lines from one of my favourite poems, which I believe is a commentary about the music record label industry!

Now the frog puffed up with rage.
“Brainless bird – you’re on the stage –
Use your wits and follow fashion.
Puff your lungs out with your passion.”
Trembling, terrified to fail,
Blind with tears, the nightingale
Heard him out in silence, tried,
Puffed up, burst a vein, and died.

 

Equity financing of books

A rather uncharitable view of the book advances that legacy publishing houses give out to established (non first-time) authors is to look at it as “convertible debt”, as this piece by Matthew Yglesias points out.

An advance is bundled with a royalty agreement in which a majority of the sales revenue is allocated to someone other than the author of the book. In its role as venture capitalist, the publisher is effectively issuing what’s called convertible debt in corporate finance circles — a risky loan that becomes an ownership stake in the project if it succeeds.

Now, as I consider possibly self-publishing my book, while simultaneously attempting to sell it to established publishing houses, I realise that apart from the convertible debt, publishing a book also involves a massive sale of equity.

I’ve finished the manuscript, and edited it once. It needs further editing, but I’ve put it off so far in the hope that I can sell the book to a mainstream publisher, who will then take care of the publishing. However, given that I might end up self-publishing, and from what I read that publishers don’t do a great job of editing anyway, I might need another pass or two.

And then there are other things to be done before the book comes out in print – a cover needs to be designed, illustrations need to be put in, maybe we should get someone to do an audiobook, and all such. Now, if a mainstream publisher picks up the book, I’d expect them to take care of these. Else I’ll need to spend to get people to do these things for me.

When people first told me that royalties in book publishing are of the order of 7.5% of cover price, it was a little hard to believe. However, looking at the costs involved in the publishing process, it’s not hard to see why publishers take the cut that they take. The problem, though, is that it involves you selling equity in your book.

By going for a mainstream publisher (rather than self-publishing), you are saving yourself the upfront cost of getting your book edited, designed and “typeset”, in exchange for a large portion of the equity of the book.

Looking at it in another way, you are trading in your limited downside (what you spend in designing, printing, etc.) for what might be a massively unlimited upside (in case my book is a runaway success). For the most part, considering that most books don’t do that well, it isn’t a very bad deal. However, considering that downside is limited (in terms of costs) I wonder if it makes sense to trade it in for a large stake of what could be a large upside.

In any case, the main reason I’m still pushing to get mainstream publishers is because the self-publishing market is a “market for lemons“. With barrier to entry not being too high, lots of bad books are self-published, and so anyone who thinks they’ve written a half decent book will try to find a mainstream publisher. And this further diminishes the average quality of self-published books. And further dissuades people like me from self-publishing!